


It's the Little Things, Dude.

by Pokeydotes



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Tony is a dad, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-24 19:37:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 54,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14362209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pokeydotes/pseuds/Pokeydotes
Summary: Peter's life is one case of WTF after another, not that he minds. Because yeah, there might be bruises and bloody noses, but he's pretty sure he just made friends with the Black Widow.OrWhat is intended to be a series of one shots/drabbles of Peter Parker interacting with the Avengers in one way or another.





	1. Chill, Dude. It's Just a Bra, Not the End of the World

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is. Don't look for a plot. It was between following a plot(less) bunny or actually answering emails at work today. Peter Parker won my attention and...ta-da? I hope to write more, maybe.

Peter was starting to think that something was wrong with his friend. People thought Peter talked a lot, but Ned usually never shut up, at least not when he was excited.

 

And Peter _knew_ Ned was excited. They’d been planning this for weeks, and Ned had asked at least twice a day if it was really going to happen, if Tony Stark was really going to let him stay. Peter hadn’t been able to convince his friend to let it go, that yes, Mr. Stark had said it was fine, and he didn’t need to ask. Every. Single. Day.

  
It’d reminded Peter of the way he’d texted Happy in the beginning. He might have sent a single two word text apologizing to the man around the fifteenth time Ned had asked, “Do you think he’ll be there? Or is he gonna leave as soon as we get there?”

 

“I don’t think Mr. Stark is just gonna leave us unsupervised in the tower, Ned. He’ll be there.”

 

And he was. Tony Stark was currently digging through Peter’s book bag, unpacking the horde of candy onto the large sofa in front of the even larger TV. “Oh, Twizzlers and sour gummies, the good stuff,” he said, before ripping the small bag open with his teeth and helping himself. “Mind if I keep these?”

 

Ned simply stood there. Quiet and still, hands clenched around the straps of his back pack as Tony Stark began untangling sour gummy worms.

 

“Yeah, you can have ‘em,” Peter answered when Ned refused to speak.

 

Tony seemed to take it in stride, seemingly used to people freezing up in what Peter was beginning to recognize as a fanboy coma. He tossed a piece of candy in his mouth, pointed at Peter and said, “You’re responsible for him. No stupid shit, kid. I’m serious.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“This room, kitchen, bathroom, your room. That’s it.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Tony squinted his eyes as he slowly ate another gummy worm. “What’s the rule?”

 

“Stick to the grey area,” Peter said, which finally earned a reaction from Ned whose wide-eyed expression took on a look of confusion. “Nothing you would do, nothing you wouldn’t.”

  
Tony simply winked, clicked his tongue and started to walk away. “Make yourselves at home,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll be in the lab helping Bruce, I’ll be back later.”

 

“Bruce Banner?” Peter asked, voice getting a smidge higher than he’d like.

 

“The one and only. Call Friday if you need me,” Tony yelled, disappearing into the hall beyond.

 

“Dude,” Ned hissed, “Bruce Banner. As in the Hulk. I’m in the same building as the Hulk!”

 

“You’re in the same building as Bruce Banner,” Peter corrected, plopping down on the couch and reaching for the remote. “Pretty sure we don’t want to be in the same building as the Hulk.”

 

He flipped on the TV and began searching through the movie channels while Ned continued to stand, head turning every which way as he took in the central living area. “Dude, you promised you’d be cool.”

 

“I lied,” said Ned, falling back on the couch and touching the seat cushions reverently, fingers smoothing over the expensive fabric. “This is the single coolest thing to ever happen to me.”

 

“You say that every time we do something Stark or Spider-Man related,” Peter pointed out. And it was true. “I’m starting to think that if Mr. Stark waved at you it would be the coolest thing to ever happen to you.”

 

Ned grinned and propped his feet on the coffee table as he opened the bag of Twizzlers. “As long as he did it in front of Flash, it would be. Does he have HBO? We could binge Game of Thrones.”

 

Peter shifted uncomfortably as he said, “Yeah, that’ll be a no.”

 

“He doesn’t have HBO?”

 

“He has everything,” Peter explained, “We just can’t watch it. Baby monitor.”

 

Ned frowned. “Like in your suit?”

 

Peter rolled his eyes and prompted, “Friday?”

 

Friday’s voice immediately filled the room, earning another smile from Ned. “Mr. Stark has implemented the Baby Monitor Protocol throughout the tower to help ensure young, developing minds are not exposed to unnecessarily mature themes including but not limited to strong language, nudity, sexual situations, and violence.”

 

Ned’s left nostril flared in confusion. “Okay, I get the sex thing, but violence? Dude, you’re Spider-Man.”

 

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s just a joke, but Friday took it seriously.”

 

“I am not allowed to go against protocol, Peter,” Friday stated calmly. “We have talked about this.”

 

“Repeatedly, I know,” Peter groaned. “Just pick something else, Ned.”

 

Two hours later they were half way through the candy and on the third episode of X-Files when Ned mentioned he was hungry.

  
“You are literally eating right now,” Peter pointed out, tossing a skittle at his forehead.

 

“I want real food,” Ned said, looking for the skittle. He gave up when it fell between the cushions. “Like with bread or something.”

 

“We can order pizza?” Peter suggested, already reaching for his wallet. “I’ve got like twenty bucks, what’ve you got?”

 

“I’ve got ten, but can’t we ask Mr. Stark to pay for it?”

 

Peter tilted his head back and looked at his friend. “Do you want to go ask him?”

 

Ned looked like he’d rather do almost anything else.

 

“Mr. Stark says it is okay to order pizza,” Friday cut in, making Peter jump up in surprise, “as long as you order enough for him and Dr. Banner.”

 

“You asked him?” Peter groaned, “Friday, we didn’t want to bother him.”

 

“I was to keep Mr. Stark informed of when you were hungry. It is part of the Baby Monitor Protocol, subset Feeding Time.”

 

Peter rolled his eyes, no longer feeling bad about Mr. Stark paying for their food. “Can you order us three extra-large Supremes?”

 

“Of course, Peter.”

 

Ned sighed in contentment. “This is the single coolest thing to ever happen.”

 

“Shut up, Ned.”

 

* * *

Thirty minutes later Peter was hopping in the elevator to meet the delivery guy. He and Ned had split the cost of the tip, the two five dollar bills folded neatly in his hand as he pressed the button for the ground floor.

 

The building was quiet now, most of its occupants having left for the day. Peter fully expected the front lobby to be empty, so when the elevator doors opened to show Natasha Romanov standing before him, Peter’s mind sort of froze.

 

Her hair was windswept, her face pinched in either pain or annoyance, Peter wasn’t sure. One arm was crossed over her middle, her hand pulling the front of her shirt across her body.  Peter took one uncertain step forward, intending to get out of her way, but she seemed to have other plans.

 

With one arm still wrapped around her middle, she used the other to push Peter back into the elevator. She didn’t seem to care that he’d just stepped off of it, and he was too surprised at being manhandled to form the words to point it out. Not that he didn’t try.

 

“Um, Natasha? I was kinda…um…” He pointed to the closing doors, the money still clutched in his hand.  She looked over her shoulder, arched her brow, and pushed the button for the top floor. “Never mind,” he muttered and pressed his lips together in what he knew was an awkward smile.

 

He’d only actually met Natasha a few weeks ago. It started with an awkward introduction that consisted of Tony pointing at “the kid”, Natasha acknowledging that he was in fact “a kid” and the two adults arguing in front of said “kid”.

 

What followed was an awkward dinner (in which Peter sat quietly and didn’t say a word unless spoken to), an awkward encounter in the hallway (Peter had managed to nod his head in hello and give a close lipped smile which was surprisingly returned), and a short run-in in Tony’s lab (where she arrived, asked Tony to speak in private, and Peter was promptly dismissed…kicked out, politely, but still, awkward).

 

In grand total, Peter had managed to have three uncomfortable encounters with the Black Widow, all three consisting of maybe less than twenty words spoken between the two of them.

 

Round four wasn’t looking to be any better.

 

But then the doors closed, Natasha turned around, and Peter finally got a good look at her. She let her arm drop, the fabric of her shirt falling open with it.

 

Peter just stared. The words “bra” and “skin” tripping over one another in his head. But then he saw the torn shirt, the red and blistered skin just below the bra and his brain started to process things a little more, because yeah there were boobs, but there were also _burns_.

 

“Eyes up, kid.”

 

Peter immediately looked up, not at her eyes, as she had probably intended, but at the ceiling, because, well…

 

She sighed, and Peter could tell she was about to speak, but before she could get anything out, Peter’s mouth decided to open and beat her to it.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

Peter let his eyes drop from the light fixture and met her stubborn stare with one of his own. “No one ever believes me when I say that.”

 

“And they shouldn’t, Tony’s told me some of what you’ve been up to,” she said, surprising Peter with a small smile. “But seriously, it’s not as bad as it looks.” She looked back down and gently touched the edges of the burn. Peter let his eyes follow her hand.

 

It took up the majority of her right side, starting a few inches above her belly button and disappearing beneath the swell of the black sports bra. It looked the worst at the center, with white blisters and angry reds, but the rest looked like something closer to a really bad sunburn.

 

“Dr. Banner’s here,” he said, eyes still stuck on her fingers tracing along the wound. “He can probably fix you up.”

 

“I can do it myself,” she assured him before reaching up to remove the ruined shirt. “Mind lending me one of those sweaters?” she asked, gesturing to Peter’s shirt with her chin.

 

She was still struggling to get her shirt off by the time Peter reached around, grabbed the back of his school sweatshirt and pulled it over his head. He held it out for her, returning her grateful smile before remembering the “eyes up” rule and slowly just turning around altogether, facing the opposite wall and giving her privacy.

 

Like he hadn’t already seen her with her shirt off.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said after a few quiet seconds.

 

“For what?” he asked, eyes still firmly locked on the wall.

 

“Traumatizing you.”

 

Peter frowned and, before his brain could stop him, he turned around and stared at her. She already had his sweater on, the long cuffs gathered in her fists as she leaned back against the elevator wall. “How’d you traumatize me?”

 

“Pretty sure it’s frowned upon to show a fourteen-year-old your bra,” she explained, kicking at the ruined shirt on the ground.

 

“I’m sixteen,” he corrected, which earned him another smile, the same one Aunt May and Ms. Potts gave him when they thought he was being ‘adorable’. “And you didn’t traumatize me,” he added. “I’m not traumatized.”

 

“Right,” she said, and her smile now turned humoring. “All the same, I’m sorry. I’m not used to…It’ll take some getting used to you being so…sixteen.”

 

Peter didn’t really know what to say to that, so he just gave her another tight-lipped smile and let his fingers play with the hem of his t-shirt, the wad of money was now a rumpled mess in his sweaty palm.

 

Two more seconds went by, and Peter could feel the elevator begin to slow when she spoke up again. “That wasn’t…please tell me that wasn’t the first time you’ve ever seen a girl without her shirt on.”

 

Peter felt his eyes widen, knew from the familiar heat that he was blushing, that his ears were turning red. “No… I mean…in person, maybe…”

 

She just groaned as the elevator doors opened, her face buried in her hands. “Just don’t tell Stark, for the love of god.”

 

“I won’t tell anybody,” he hurried to assure her, bending down to grab what was left of her shirt as they stepped out onto the floor. “I mean, it’s not like anybody’d believe me anyway…”

 

“Who wouldn’t believe what?” Tony asked, rounding the corner, Ned following behind like an over eager shadow. Peter thought hearing about Bruce Banner had nearly sent Ned over the edge of fanboy nirvana, but looking at him now, standing behind Tony Stark as he openly stared wide-eyed and slack jawed at the Black Widow…Peter was fairly certain Ned had officially been broken.

 

Peter turned his eyes from Ned and an impatiently nosey looking Tony to Natasha, waiting for her to take the lead. Only her idea of dealing with an inquisitive Tony was to cross her arms across her chest and stare at him.

 

It was obviously a familiar game between the two because Tony simply narrowed his eyes and pointed a half-eaten Twizzler stick at her accusingly.

 

“Friday said you were hurt.”

 

“I’m fine,” she assured him, much as she had done with Peter earlier. Peter half expected Tony to do the same as he would with Peter and simply ask Friday what was wrong, to run a scan, check for vitals, pretty much anything he could to blatantly prove Peter to be the lying liar that he was.

 

Only Tony didn’t. Which was kind of not fair.

 

Instead, Tony put the Twizzler stick back in his mouth, chewed on the end contemplatively as he continued to stare at Natasha. Then he looked to Peter, looked at the balled up bundle of black fabric in his hands before looking back to Natasha in the oversized blue sweatshirt proudly displaying Midtown School of Science and Technology on a bright yellow banner.

 

Tony, the genius that he is, simply smiled, Twizzler hanging out of his mouth like a limp cigar, and said, “Nice shirt.”

 

Natasha didn’t even flinch. She just continued to stare back with a challenging glare.

 

Ned, mouth still hanging open, had regained the ability to blink and was doing so slowly as he stared back and forth between Tony, Natasha, and the black shirt in Peter’s hands.

 

It wasn’t until Tony casually and somewhat accusingly asked “Did you flash the kid?” that Ned managed to actually look at Peter. Peter wasn’t entirely sure what his face was doing, he just hoped it didn’t look like Ned’s, who seemed to have once again lost the ability to blink.

 

Peter could feel his face heat up, and he knew better than to look at Tony, and he _couldn’t_ look at Natasha. That left the shirt in his hands. He focused on the torn and singed edges, the slightly melted buttons and tried to imagine what could have caused that kind of damage in the middle of Manhattan.

 

He expected Natasha to come up with an excuse, something brilliant and spy worthy. Instead, she gave a defeated sigh and said, “We’re gonna work on that poker face, Parker.”

 

Peter felt the blush burning his face as he slowly glanced up with what he hoped was an expression that said “I’m sorry.”

 

She gave him another look, one he’d seen Aunt May give him on occasion but still hadn’t been able to translate. He was about to open his mouth and try to apologize out loud, but Tony reached out, placed a hand on Natasha’s shoulder and carefully steered her away and down the hall, their voices trailing behind them.

 

“Why are you traumatizing my kid?”

 

“He’s not yours and he assured me he wasn’t traumatized.”

 

Peter waited until they were out of site before he turned to face Ned, who was still staring with a blissed out look of awe. Eventually, the corners of Ned’s mouth began to turn up in an open mouthed smile in a way that always reminded Peter of an emoji. Peter couldn’t help but smile as well.

 

“Dude,” Ned whispered. His voice echoed that same tone of awe it had when he first found out about Spider-Man.

 

“I know.”

 

“That was Natasha Romanov. The Black Widow.”

 

“I know.”

 

“She’s wearing your shirt.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Do you think she’ll give it back? “

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Do you think it’ll smell like her?”

 

“I don’t…,” Peter began, only to stop when he registered exactly what Ned had said. He frowned and said, “Don’t be weird, Ned.”

 

“You’re right. That is a little creepy,” Ned agreed, nodding as he leaned further into the hall, neck stretching to see around the corner. “Did you really see her topless? I mean, that is what happened right? She’s like, not wearing a shirt under that, right?”

 

“No. I mean, she’s wearing a bra, but…I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about it.”

 

“Dude. Your life…”

 

“I know.” They stood in silence, both trying to absorb this new development. Even after two years it was sometimes a little too surreal: super powers, the suit, Tony Stark and the rest of the Avengers…

 

Ned finally gave up looking for another sign of the Black Widow and turned to Peter, his face wrinkled in confusion. “Dude, where’s the pizza?”

 


	2. Hey Captain Asshole, Can You Friend Me on Facebook?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I need your help," Steve said, and Peter's mind flashed back nearly two years to Mr. Stark saying the exact same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure this is as stereotypically fanfictiony as you can get. I don't know whether or not I should apologize...

Aunt May and Mr. Stark had come to an understanding. Peter thought he’d be happy with this. Peter was wrong.

They were cordial, friendly, and both intent on ensuring that Peter made it to adulthood in relatively one piece. Cool, nothing wrong with that.

Except they acted more like a pair of amicable divorcees with joint custody, Peter awkwardly stuck in the middle. It wasn’t like with other kids, not the ones Peter had seen at school who always complained about their parents fighting, arguing over who got Christmas this year and who had to pay for braces.

No, Aunt May pretty much had the final say in anything, or so Tony let her think. That didn’t mean they didn’t still argue about anything and everything, including curfews, dating, what was an adequate amount of vegetables, and Peter’s favorite, colleges:

_“MIT is world renowned.”_

_“What’s wrong with NYU?”_

_“I’ll have Friday send you a list.”_

May said it wasn’t arguing, it was more like a series of heartfelt discussions. He figured he’d cut them some slack around the time he saw Aunt May googling articles on co-parenting and Tony started making sure he had something green to eat at every shared meal.

It was fine. For the first time in a while he had more than one person who seemed to actually care about his well-being. So what if they occasionally didn’t see eye to eye, he was actually starting to get used to it, slowly figuring out how to navigate between the two.

So of course, the one time they actually agreed on something…

“Can I ground him? Is that a thing? I think it should be a thing.”

May let it be a thing.

Tony hung up the phone and stared at Peter, brows forming a very disapproving V above his narrowed eyes. “Just for the record, you aren’t suicidal? That’s not a thing with you, is it?”

“No,” Peter assured him, tossing his mask onto the counter. “It wasn’t my fau—“

“Nope,” Tony interrupted, pointing at Peter with his phone, “We’re not gonna finish that sentence.”

Peter pressed his lips together and glared. “You’re not being fair.”

“I don’t have to be,” was Tony’s reply. “I just have to make sure you don’t die. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I thought I had it under control,” Peter explained, his voice choosing that moment to crack because the universe was a sadistic dick.

Tony arched a brow. “And did you?”

 _Obviously not_ , Peter thought, but figured a resigned “No,” was a better answer.

Tony seemed to agree because the angry lines on his forehead slowly disappeared as he nodded. Peter half expected more lecturing, more questions on why he thought he was bulletproof, on what he should do the next time he came across a horde of armed men. But nope.

Instead, Tony reached out and poked the emblem in the middle of Peter’s chest. The suit immediately loosened and began to slide down his shoulders.

“You’re taking the suit again?”

Tony had turned away, his arm stretched towards the duffle bag holding Peter’s extra clothes. He froze at the question. He turned back to Peter, opened his mouth to speak but paused as though he were reconsidering. Peter held his breath, not saying a word as he stood there in his underwear, the suit pooled around his ankles.

“You can keep the suit,” Tony decided, giving Peter a reason to breathe again, “BUT, you can’t wear it,” he continued. “Not without permission. You can keep it for emergencies only, and kid, I mean actual emergencies.”

Peter nodded, afraid to open his mouth because he might say something to make the man change his mind. Tony tossed the phone onto the counter next to Peter’s mask and sat down on the nearest stool. He leaned against the bar, one hand rising to scratch a thumbnail tiredly across his eyebrow.

Peter stepped out of the suit and carefully picked it up, holding it tightly in both hands. There was a part of him that was afraid that it’d still get taken away.

Tony propped his elbow on the counter and pointed at Peter. “No patrolling,” he said, “No Spider-Manning…spidering? Your other half is taking a vacation. You’re grounded. Literally. Two feet on the pavement at all times.”

Peter swallowed and asked, “For how long?”

“Haven’t decided yet,” Tony answered, tone a little lighter than it was before. “We’ll start at a month and go from there.”

“A month?”

“A month,” Tony confirmed, grabbing the bag and tossing it to Peter. “Now get dressed. Don’t you have homework?”

Peter groaned.

 

* * *

 

For three weeks, Peter followed the rules. He was home at a reasonable time (May was pleased), he made it to every decathlon practice without fail (MJ seemed pleased, she didn’t frown as much), and he only texted Happy twice asking if he thought Mr. Stark had changed his mind (Happy was not pleased).

All in all, Peter thought he was handling the whole super hero version of being grounded pretty well.

So by the time the third Friday rolled around, Peter was about ready to climb the walls. Literally. It was the weekend, the last weekend he’d have to spend following Mr. Stark’s weird pseudo-parental version of a punishment and Peter planned to spend it in glorious teenage style.

With Ned, a PlayStation, and the new Star Wars BTL-A4 Y-Wing Starfighter Lego set (1,966 pieces).

Ned had gotten it for his birthday and after much pleading, May had relented, citing time served for good behavior deserved a reprieve from the mandatory part-time house arrest.

“Just Legos? No Spider-Man?”

“Maybe a little God of War, but yeah, no Spider-Man.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Peter Parker knew how to follow rules.

He just wasn’t very good at it.

“So, I’m thinking if we don’t sleep tonight we can probably knock out the frame of the ship,” Ned said, slinging his backpack over his shoulder as they made their way to the bus stop. “My mom’s got the night shift tonight so we don’t have to worry about keeping her up.”

“Awesome, that means we can camp out in the living room,” Peter observed. The sky was grey and promised rain. It was the perfect weather for spending the weekend binging on food, games, and TV. People were moving at a fast pace, whether it was because they were afraid to be caught in the pending rain, excited to be free for the weekend, or just because they were New Yorkers who didn’t know any better, Peter wasn’t sure. Not that it mattered, he and Ned were moving right along with them, up until the moment Peter felt his skin begin to itch.

He slowed his pace, eyes narrowing as he took in his surroundings. The whole extra sense thing was still relatively new, and unlike the rest of his powers, he was still learning how this one worked. It didn’t feel like it did when there was danger, it wasn’t a warning. It was more like a…head’s up? Like he was being watched and the spider inside wanted him to know.

“Peter?” Ned asked when Peter stopped walking and turned around. A few people cursed as they passed by, sneering at the boy who’d blocked their way, but Peter ignored them. He’d just spotted the plain black car parked between a minivan and oversized SUV. There wasn’t really anything unusual about it, except the man leaning against the side, arms folded over his chest, baseball cap pulled down low was definitely not a soccer-mom waiting for her kid.

“Is that…?” Ned began only to trail off when the man waved.

“Steve Rogers,” Peter confirmed, recognizing the beard and broad shoulders from the time Tony had introduced them months before. “Captain America.”

Peter had no idea why he was here. He’d met the man exactly twice; once in Germany as Spider-Man, once at the tower as Peter Parker. And if Peter was being honest, he had been under the impression that the Captain hadn’t been too fond of him, or with the idea of him. He’d been perfectly friendly, words a little stiff like he wasn’t entirely certain he was welcome, but he wasn’t dismissive or rude. There was just something in the way Rogers had looked at Tony when it was revealed that Peter was Spider-Man. Peter was fairly certain it was his age, but who knew?

Then there was the whole Siberia thing…Peter hadn’t been too happy when he found out about that. No matter how much Peter tried, how much Tony and the others preached about it being time to move on, that the past was in the past—Peter could not help remembering the way Tony had been afterwards, the way Colonel Rhodes had been…

Yeah, it was safe to say Peter wasn’t too fond of Steve Rogers either, or he didn’t want to be, but—it was Captain America. Peter used to sleep in star spangled pajamas because of the man. He still had a copy of TIME magazine with the Captain on the cover buried somewhere on his desk, and somewhere in his closet was a collector’s edition Captain America action figure. He’d lost the shield years ago, and the hand was a little melted from where he’d set it too close to the stove once, but it was still there, tucked away amongst the Iron Man mask and replica blaster gloves.

“The Cap fucked up, kid. But he wasn’t alone. We all have some of the blame,” Tony had said before introducing them. And if Mr. Stark, the one who’d actually been hurt could forgive the man, then so could Peter…right?

“Pete, good to see you again,” greeted Rogers as Peter, followed by Ned, approached the car.

“Yeah, you too,” Peter returned. He cast a glance around, nervously rubbing the back of his neck as he checked to see if anyone else had noticed that Captain Freaking America was standing outside Midtown Tech.

No one had.

Peter was about to ask what the Captain was doing there, but Ned kept poking Peter in the side, his eyes locked in a dazed sort of far off stare as he looked up at the man towering above them.

“Uh, this is my friend,” Peter began, gesturing to Ned with his thumb. Much to his surprise (and to Ned’s obvious eternal pleasure), Steve smiled and extended his hand.

“Ned, right?” he asked, catching Peter off guard. He’d talked about Ned before, he just didn’t think the Captain had really been paying attention. Or cared.

Ned reached out and took Steve’s hand.

“Pleased to meet you. Peter’s mentioned you before,” Steve continued with that famous smile, and Peter cautiously put a hand on Ned’s back in case his friend’s knees decided to give out.

There was a short one-two up down motion, normal with most standard handshakes, but when it came to the point where most people let go…Ned didn’t.

Steve’s smile sort of twisted to the side, his eyes going from friendly to amused as he gently tried to extract his hand without being rude. But Peter could see the white knuckled grip Ned had on the other man’s hand, and judging by the dopey (completely embarrassing-- come on, dude) expression Ned had on his face, his friend wasn’t even aware of it.

With an apologetic smile, Peter reached up and carefully peeled Ned’s fingers back, freeing Steve’s hand as he said, “Yeah, he’s pleased to meet you, too.”

“Yeah,” Ned agreed somewhat dreamily, although his ‘yeah’ sounded more like “yeahuhuhuh”, Peter decided to cut him some slack. He’s pretty sure he stuttered through his first meeting with Iron Man.

Steve met Peter’s eyes, tilted his head towards Ned and quietly asked, “Is he okay?”

“What, Ned?” Peter looked at his friend. He was a little more out of it than his first encounter with Mr. Stark, but he had managed to give an actual verbal response which was a step up from Ned’s first encounter with the Black Widow. “Yeah, he does that. So, um, what do, uh, what do you need, Cap? Steve…Sir?”

Now it was the Captain’s turn to glance around nervously. He gave Ned a quick smile before grabbing Peter’s shoulder and gesturing to the other side of the car. Peter looked at Ned, gave him a look that said “stay here” and allowed the Captain to guide him around the trunk of the car. It wasn’t much in way of privacy, but between the sound of car horns, parents yelling, and the chatter of teens eagerly discussing the weekend, it was enough.

Ned didn’t even pretend to look like he wasn’t staring at them.

“I need your help,” Steve began, and Peter’s mind flashed back to nearly two years ago to Mr. Stark saying the exact same thing.

“With what?” Peter asked.

Steve gave another look around, scratched absently at his temple and said, “Long story short, someone took something that doesn’t belong to them, and we need to get it back.”

“Who? What did they steal?” Peter asked, trying to keep his voice as low as Captain America’s.

“The what is some unfamiliar alien tech,” Steve explained. “And the who…is someone who isn’t qualified to handle it.”

“And why do you need me? I mean, how am I supposed to help?”

Peter noticed the way the Captain looked a little uneasy, his eyes kept looking over his shoulder like he expected one of the mini-van yielding housewives to overhear.

“You’ll be the one doing the actual retrieving,” Steve explained uncomfortably, and Peter felt his eyes widen.

“Seriously?” he asked excitedly, earning a nod and a relieved smile. “Where is it? Is it far, because I’m pretty sure my Aunt isn’t going to let me leave the country again, she’s still not over the last time--”

“Relax, Peter,” Steve said, and Peter felt his neck redden as his rambling was cut off. “It’s in Manhattan. No passport required.”

“And who’s the bad guy?”

“Not really a _bad_ guy,” Steve explained, glancing at his watch. “More like an overeager politician who’s in over his head.”

Peter had a thousand more questions. Why were the Avengers dealing with this? If this politician really wasn’t supposed to have this tech, why couldn’t they just tell the officials at the D.O.D.C and have them handle it? Who else would be working on this? Were there more Avengers involved? Would SHIELD be there? What kind of tech was it? Did it have to do with Toomes and his men?

But when Steve gave his watch another glance, Peter got the impression that time was an issue and decided to ask the most pressing question first.

“Does Mr. Stark know about this?”

“It was his idea.”

“And he’s okay with me wearing the suit?”

“He…Nat was supposed to be with us on this, but she got…she’s otherwise indisposed at the moment.”

“So…” Peter had a sinking feeling in his stomach that drained away almost all excitement, “Mr. Stark has no idea you’re asking me right now?”

“Not yet,” Steve admitted, sounding like he didn’t think it’d be a problem, “but we’re on a time limit. Clint and Natasha are both out of range and you’re the only one with the ability to get in and get out without drawing attention.”

Peter ran his hand over his mouth, mind going a mile a minute. He wanted to go, but something kept niggling at his brain. At first he thought it might be the fact that Mr. Stark didn’t know Peter was being asked to help on this mission, that his mentor would quickly put a stop to it if he knew, insisting Peter serve out the remaining sentence on his grounding. He thought maybe it might be his promise to Aunt May, that the weekend would only consist of Legos and junk food. But there was something else…

“Is this even legal?” he asked.

Steve actually winced as he admitted, “The legalities are a little…vague.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be Captain Morals?” Peter blurted out, giving a small wince of his own as soon as the question left his mouth. He was pretty sure Captain America wouldn’t appreciate being judged by a sixteen-year-old kid.

Steve narrowed his eyes and asked, “Did Stark tell you to call me that?”

“What? No, I just, I just don’t remember you being so…” Peter made an awkward gesture in the air that he hoped translated to something along the lines of _inconsiderate of the rules._

Steve gave a heavy sigh and tiredly rubbed at his forehead. “Yeah, me either, kid. Just think of it as being for the greater good and worry about the rest later. So you gonna help us?”

Peter closed his eyes, his shoulders slumping as he felt a blush sweep up from his neck to his ears. “Yeah, I, uh…I can’t.”

“Why?” Peter didn’t think he’d ever seen an adult look more confused.

“I’m grounded,” he explained quietly, eyes focused on the ground because, seriously, was there anything more embarrassing than this.

“I’ll explain everything to your aunt—“

“No, she didn’t…she’s not the one who grounded me,” Peter explained, “Mr. Stark did.”

The Captain stared at him, and to Peter’s horror, his expression morphed from one of confusion to one of humor, the corners of his mouth threatening to rise into a full smile.

“Please do not laugh at me right now,” Peter pleaded, his tone angrier than he intended.

“Sorry,” Steve apologized, carefully schooling his features. He gave Peter a calculating stare and calmly asked, “Do you want me to call and ask permission?”

Peter pulled his phone out of his pocket, let his thumb slide over the cracked screen as he took a deep breath, weighing his options. “He said I couldn’t put on the suit,” Peter began, looking up to meet Steve’s questioning gaze, “what if I didn’t wear the suit? What if I did this as just, you know, Peter and not Spider-Man?”

“Weren’t you just lecturing me on morals?” Steve asked with a tilt of his head. “I’m pretty sure that’s a Stark influenced loophole you just found.”

“Greater good, right?”

Steve smiled.

 

“Are you going with him?” Ned asked when Peter finally came back around, eyes glued to Captain America as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the black car.

“Yeah,” Peter said, hand flexing nervously around the strap of his backpack. “I mean…yeah.”

Ned frowned. “Aren’t you still grounded?”

“Technically, but…” Peter trailed off with a shrug. What was he supposed to say?

“No, I get it,” Ned said, gesturing to the car’s tinted windows. “That’s Captain America. Pretty sure the First Amendment says you have to help him.”

Peter gave a small snort of laughter and smiled. “Something like that, but hey, can you cover for me with May? If she calls, just say that I’m…”

“Doing the complete opposite of sneaking off with Captain America to do top secret Avengery stuff?” Ned finished.

“Yes,” Peter cringed. “But maybe not word it like that?”

“I got you, dude. Just go, and take notes. I only put up with you so that I can live vicariously through your adventures.”

Peter rolled his eyes as he opened the car door. “I love you too, Ned.”

 

* * *

 

 

Sam Wilson wasn’t happy, Peter could tell, and he was beginning to suspect that it was because of him, which really wasn’t cool seeing as Peter literally just got there.

“Parker,” Sam greeted, giving a polite nod before looking to Steve. “Strange seeing you here.”

“Cap invited me,” Peter explained, setting his backpack down at his feet. They were standing in a narrow alley between two buildings, a blue and rusted garbage bin strategically blocking the entrance from the early evening traffic.

“Nat was unavailable,” Steve explained, arm elbow deep in a bag of his own. He pulled out a handful of small, clear earbuds. “And by the time Clint would have made it here, the device would already be on a plane halfway across the Atlantic.”

“Then we should have scrapped this,” Sam said, arms folded angrily across his chest, “gone with Plan B.”

Steve dropped his bag and met Sam’s hard glare with one of his own. “Peter is Plan B.”

“I can do this,” Peter insisted, eyes bouncing back and forth between the two men. He wasn’t sure what was going on, what Sam’s issue was with him helping. He’d been under the impression that the man liked him, or at least, tolerated him. Unless all of those snarky comments weren’t really in jest…

Sam sighed and turned to face Peter. “No one’s saying you can’t, kid.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Sam’s nostrils flared as he glanced once to Steve before looking back to Peter. Eventually, the stiff ridge of his posture loosened as he gave up on whatever internal conflict he’d been having. “Nothing.”

“Alright,” Steve said, acting as though nothing had happened as he passed out the communication earbuds. “It’s just as I explained in the car. You get the device, we’ll make a distraction. Sam and I will be going in through the front door, so you’ll technically be on your own, but you can run everything through us through comms, got it?”

Peter nodded, sticking the device in his ear as the Captain reached down to pull something else out of his bag.

“This is what you’ll put it in,” he said, handing Peter a small, padded pouch with a thin strap that made the whole thing look suspiciously like a purse. “Banner says it’s probably not dangerous, but it’s best to keep the device as well contained as possible.”

“It’s not gonna blow up or anything, right?” Peter asked, mind picturing a small purple glowy thing and a crumbling national monument.

“This isn’t like the Chitauri power core,” Sam assured him, smiling for the first time since Peter stepped in the alley. “You won’t be bringing down this building.”

“This should take twenty minutes, tops,” Steve continued, tilting his head back to glance at the building behind him. “Climb up, grab the device, climb back down. They shouldn’t even know you were there. Easy peasy.”

“Easy peasy,” Peter echoed, putting the pouch around his body like a messenger bag. “And it’s in a case?”

“Last we saw it,” Sam confirmed. “They’re supposed to move it tonight, a chopper’s scheduled to land in a few hours.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and squinted at the screen. “Security feed shows it was taken to Ketchner’s office, and it doesn’t show to have moved since. It’s the end of the workday, so the building’s mostly empty, but listen, if it gets hairy, get out of there, Parker,” Sam added. “We’ll get the device another way.”

Peter half expected Steve to disagree, for him to insist that the device’s recovery was the top priority. Instead, he gripped Peter’s shoulder and in a tone worthy of his PSA videos said, “Sam’s right. If it looks like there’s trouble, retreat. There’s no shame in that.”

“Okay,” Peter agreed, feeling suddenly very small as Captain America looked down at him with that trademark expression of sincerity.

“Do not engage with anyone. If you get spotted, turn around and run,” Steve ordered, earning an approving nod from Sam. “If things go sour with us, do not compromise yourself. You get out and get back to the tower. We can handle ourselves.”

“Okay,” Peter repeated. He knew full well he was skating on the edge with this. One misstep and Mr. Stark and May would make sure he was grounded until graduation. He had no desire to upstage anyone, to prove he could take the bad guys on. Peter was fully planning on executing this mission with as little drama as possible. Besides, he’d taken on bad guys with advanced high-tech alien weaponry and won. How hard could a little breaking and entering be?

Fully psyched up, Peter reached for his bag and pulled out his web shooters, flexing his wrists to make sure they were secure. When he grabbed for the generic knitted black mask Steve had found in the trunk of his car, Sam frowned and asked, “Where’s the suit?”

“I’m not wearing the suit,” Peter informed him, hopping from one foot to the other as he removed his socks and shoes. “Loopholes.”

“Long story,” Steve said, waving off whatever question Sam had been about to ask. “He’ll be fine.”

Sam watched as Peter stuffed his shoes into his backpack and approached the building. “Can you climb this thing without the suit?”

“Yeah,” Peter said, reaching out and testing the texture of the brick. “It’ll actually, um, it’ll actually be easier. I mean, Mr. Stark did great with the suit, but nothing beats nature, right?” he asked, looking over his shoulder with a smile.

Steve gave him another supportive smile and Peter turned around and began to climb, humidity from the pending rain mixing with the sweat from his fingers and toes making the bricks slick.

“Nature my ass,” Sam said, and Peter imagined a smile on his face.  “That ain’t natural, Parker.”

 

Within no time at all, Peter had climbed through a bathroom window and was currently pulling himself into the small vent on the ceiling.

“Okay, this is a tight fit,” he muttered, easing the grate closed as quietly as he could.

“ _That’s why the Cap picked you, short stack,”_ Sam said, “ _We sure as hell couldn’t fit in there.”_

“ _Focus,_ ” Steve ordered, stopping Peter from replying. It didn’t stop his frown though. “ _We’re going in. Remember, Pete. Get in, get out.”_

“And do not engage, got it.” Slowly, he began to crawl through the air vent, peering through the gaps of the grates as he passed from one room to the next..

Twice he saw someone through the grates; men in sharp suits, the tell-tale bulge of a gun poking through their jackets. It made Peter feel breathless, antsy. He knew it was the adrenaline.

He pushed the mask up, closed his eyes and took a deep breath, enjoying the coolness of the air on his face. The vent was small and cramped, the fabric from the knitted mask cheap and thick, nowhere near the quality of his own mask. Every breath produced condensation that dampened the fabric, tickling his nose, and the close walls of the air vent had him feeling a bit claustrophobic, every movement had him touching the walls on all sides, reminding him of just how small of a space he was in.

“ _How you doing, Peter?”_ Sam asked, voice sounding surprisingly concerned. Peter took another deep breath, wiped the sweat from his face, and forced a smile.

“I’m good,” he assured them, careful to keep his voice as low as possible. He closed his eyes, visualized the mental map Steve had laid out for him on the drive over, and continued on, counting the rooms he passed as he went.

“ _Be on guard,”_ Steve cautioned.

When Peter finally looked down into the desired office, he smiled. For once, Parker luck seemed to be nowhere in sight. The office was dark, the door shut, and there on the crowded desk sat a large, black case.

“Found it,” he said, smile growing.

Slowly, Peter opened the grate and jumped down, sweaty toes landing softly on the worn carpet. He tiptoed towards the door, leaned his ear against it and listened…when he couldn’t hear anything he flipped the lock and made his way back to the case.

It wasn’t as high tech as the case that once held his suit. If anything, it looked like a bullet proof briefcase, the kind you’d see in old mob movies that were always loaded with cash.

Peter flipped the locks open and lifted the lid. Inside was a small, round disc shaped object. It looked like an arc reactor, but bigger and…Peter picked it up and turned it over, watching as the light shifted inside, like a shadow moving. It almost seemed alive.

“Huh?” Peter muttered, turning the disc over once again before putting it gently in the padded pouch.

“ _Everything good, Pete_?” Steve asked, his voice fractured and full of static.

“Yeah,” Peter assured him, reaching up and wiggling the earbud to stop the tickle caused by the static. “I got it. I’m on my way out.”

Peter closed the empty case, gave the room another quick look to ensure he wasn’t leaving anything behind, and made his way back to the air vent. The words _Easy Peasy_ kept running through his mind as he crawled back towards the bathroom. Easy Peasy, in and out, they’ll never even know they were there.

Except nothing ever went the way Peter planned.

The static that had started tickling his ear in the office continued to grow, the tiny vibrations causing an irritatingly uncomfortable itch that seemed to radiate from his ear, traveling like a current until the little hairs on his arms stood on end.

Without warning, the static morphed, elongating from a series of pops and crackles to a high pitched shriek that sent a shock of pain straight to Peter’s brain.

His muscles jerked on instinct, his whole body falling into the fetal position. He cried out as he dug in his ear, desperately pulling at the earbud. He let it fall, uncaring of where it went when his shaking fingers came away bloody.

All he could hear was a steady ringing, the pounding of his heart, and the muffled sound of heavy breaths hissing through his clenched teeth. The air vent was dark, the only light coming from the open grated covers and the rooms beyond, but Peter, with his enhanced senses, could still see the way his fingers left bloody smears as he fumbled to grab the small earbud.

He slowly raised it to his good ear, holding it a few inches away as he listened to the steady _pop, ping, shriek_. He put it in his pocket and took a deep breath. He was officially on his own. He had no way to communicate with Sam and Steve, no way to tell him what had happened, to let them know he was more or less alright and was on his way out.

Head still ringing, he resumed his army-crawl style slide through the vents, very much aware of the fact that he had just finished making some serious noise, meaning there was a very high possibility that someone had heard him.

He could see the end of the line, the last turn he’d have to make before reaching the bathroom with the cracked window. Eager to be done with it all and to be in fresh air again, Peter pushed himself up onto his hands and knees as much as the small space would allow and made to hurry.

This, however, proved to be a mistake. He’d barely moved a few inches when vertigo set in, the once clear vision of an elongated air shaft tilted on its side, taking Peter with it as the pain in his ear flared again.

Peter had vertigo once when he was younger when an ear infection had left him feeling like the room was spinning even while he was laying down. He thought that was what was happening again, but in the span of half a second, Peter went from _feeling_ like he was falling, to _actually_ falling, the grate to his left giving way as his elbows caved and his body crashed into aged metal.

Suit or not, Peter still had quick reflexes. He was halfway out the hole when instincts kicked in. One hand reached up, sticking to the ceiling, the other reaching towards the ground, web shooting out to catch the falling grate before it hit the floor with a loud and telling bang.

He hung there for a moment, breath heaving, head spinning as he dangled from the ceiling vent, his legs still tucked inside at an awkward angle.

“Holy shit,” he muttered, laughing a little as he tried to calm his nerves.

Once he was sure his head no longer felt like it was about to fall off, he slowly began to reel in the fallen vent cover, moving slowly so that he didn’t lose his balance.

None of that mattered, however, when the office door opened, letting in light from the hallway and a very surprised looking man in a suit.

Peter felt that electric itch again, his hair standing on end as the man mumbled a gruff “what the fuck” before reaching for his gun. Without thinking, Peter let himself drop, his legs falling from the vent shaft and finding their way to the ground. Normally, he’d have stuck the landing, but thanks to his still throbbing ear and its accompanied vertigo…

He considered it a win that he didn’t land on his head.

And that he dodged the bullet that had just been fired.

Peter rolled onto his back, flung out both arms and fired his webs. The first gripped the gun, the second latched onto the man’s face. Peter pulled. The gun fell to the ground with a muffled clatter, the man with a muffled curse, landing hard and heavy on Peter, his hands too busy grappling with the webbing taking up most of his face to bother trying to brace his fall.

“Oof,” Peter groaned, the air completely knocked out of him by the oversized, fully-grown man. Before he could take in a breath, the man lifted his head, his one clear eye narrowed in anger as he raised his right arm only to bring it down with more force than necessary.  

Peter screamed.

His arm felt like it was on fire. He turned his head, eyes widening as he stared at the small handle of a pocket knife buried in his shoulder.

“You’re just a kid.” It was a whisper, the tone full of shock, but Peter still heard it. A sense of cold dread swept through him as he realized his mask was still pushed up, his young, pale, and completely identifiable face exposed to the man before him.

Peter shot another web at the man, blocking the rest of his view before planting his bare feet on the man’s chest and pushing with all his might.

The man went flying, landing hard on the other side of the room, the drywall cracking beneath his weight.

Peter staid long enough to see the man slump to the ground, head falling forward in unconsciousness before he was pushing himself up, bad arm held close to his side as he made his way out into the hall. He flexed his fingers, cringing at the numb, tingling sensation that trickled down his arm. There was no way he was climbing down, not with one arm.

The hall was thankfully empty, but Peter knew he wasn’t alone. He’d seen at least two men earlier, and between his scream and the gun shot…

He had to get out of there.

Mindful of the knife sticking out of his shoulder, Peter all but ran down the hall. He could hear people yelling, angry orders being shouted, and footsteps pounding, but due to the ringing in his ears (made worse by the gun going off, thank you, Mr. Bad Guy), Peter couldn’t tell how far away they were or where they were coming from.

Careful not to smear any blood on the handle, Peter pulled open the closest door and slipped inside. It was completely dark. He reached awkwardly for his phone in his back pocket and held it up, the light from the lock screen providing enough illumination that he could see he was in a rather large supply closet.

Thick wooden shelves lined two of the walls. Office supplies were neatly organized, each and every one in its place in a way that screamed compulsive disorder. The third wall held a row of metal filing cabinets, all about shoulder height, the drawers labeled with a series of alphanumeric codes.

There was a light switch, but Peter knew better than to turn it on, not when someone could walk by and see the light peeking out from beneath the door.

There wasn’t a single window.

Peter leaned his good ear against the door. He couldn’t hear anything. He sighed in relief, winced when his shoulder pulled at the knife, and promptly began to panic again.

He had no way of contacting Sam and Steve. He didn’t have either of their numbers, the earbud was completely useless, and there wasn’t a window he could use to escape. If they hadn’t come running to the rescue the moment the comms went out, then they definitely had once the gun had gone off.

The only problem was this was a big building. A very big building, and unless Peter left the safety of his closet, they’d most likely never find him.

So much for easy peasy.

Peter pulled off his mask and let his forehead rest against the nearest filing cabinet. The cool metal felt good against his sweaty skin and gave him something else to focus on beside panic and pain.

“He’s gonna kill me,” Peter mumbled, thumb scrolling through his contact list. He tapped Tony’s number and raised his phone to his good ear, only instead of the sound of ringing, Peter heard more static.

He frowned, pulled the phone away and looked at the screen. “What the hell?” The screen was distorted, the image warped, the colors wrong like the time he stuck a magnet to their old TV. As he lowered the phone, the distortion worsened.

Once it reached hip level, the screen began to blink. Peter felt his frown deepen. He took a steadying breath, “Do not panic, Peter,” he whispered and set the phone on the filing cabinet so that he could feel in his pockets. Maybe there was something else he could use, maybe the earbud was working again, maybe---

The moment he set the phone on the cabinet, the screen righted itself, the colors faded back to their normal hue, and the contact photo of Iron Man returned to normal.

Confused, Peter grabbed the phone, but the second he brought it back down, the image began to morph again.

Peter blinked as a thought formed in his head. He brought the phone down to hip level, watching as the display on his screen continued to worsen, blinking out the second it touched the pouch.

The pouch with the weird glowing disc that looked alive.

Peter hurriedly pulled the strap over his head, careful not to knock the knife’s handle. He sat the pouch on the cabinet and backed away as far as he could. Two steps were all it took for the phone to light back up. By the time he reached the opposite corner, the phone looked normal again.

He quickly hit the call button.

It rang four times before going to voicemail. Peter hung up and tried again. This time, Tony answered on the first ring, his tone stern but expectant.

“ _Please tell me you’re calling to talk about Legos_?”

Peter took a deep breath and said, “I want to start by saying this isn’t entirely my fault, and remind you that you wanted me to call when I got in over my head.”

“ _Where are you?”_

Peter closed his eyes, wincing as he admitted, “On the eleventh floor of the Michelet building.”

There was a single second of silence before Tony’s angry voice asked, “ _Where’s Rogers_?”

“Downstairs, I think. I can’t…my earbud went crazy, it was---“

“ _Listen to me, Peter_ ,” Tony ordered, voice slightly out of breath like he was moving fast, “ _Do they know you’re there_?”

Peter knew which ‘they’ he was talking about. “Yes.”

“ _Are you hurt_?”

He didn’t look at the knife. “A little.”

There was more silence followed by a confused, “ _You’re not in your suit_.” Peter assumed Tony was looking for his vitals.

“You said not to wear it.” Peter didn’t know silence could sound so _angry._

“ _I’m on my way, can you get to the roof_?”

“I think so.”

“Go.”

Before the call ended, Peter could hear the distinct sound of Tony’s suit taking flight.

He was about to grab the pouch and sneak out before he remembered the earbud in his pocket. With an accusing look at the pouch, he pulled the earpiece out of his pocket and slowly raised it to his ear. There was slight static, but nothing painful.

Hesitantly, he placed it in his ear. Immediately, he could hear the sound of heavy breathing. “Hello?”

“ _Holy shit, kid, what the hell happened_?” hissed Sam at the same time Steve worriedly asked, “ _Are you okay_?”

“ _The disc messes with the signal_ ,” Peter explained, his brain going on overdrive, “ _Mr. Stark’s on his way_.”

“ _You called Tony_?” Steve asked.

Peter nodded, forgetting that Steve couldn’t see him. “He told me to get to the roof.”

“ _Can you_?”

“Yeah.”

“ _Then go_ ,” Steve ordered, sounding just as stern as Tony. “ _Don’t worry about us, just get to the roof and wait for Tony_.”

Peter removed the earbud from his ear, grabbed the pouch, and did exactly as he was told.

 

He couldn’t leave the floor, not without drawing attention. They had the stairs blocked and Peter might be new to the whole spy business but even he knew the elevators were a death trap.

Knife still sticking dramatically out of his shoulder, Peter did the only thing he could; he jumped out of a window.

Well, climbed out. Gently.

He couldn’t move his left arm without feeling the nauseating grind of the blade against his collar bone, so with only one hand, Peter began to scale the side of the building, depending mostly on his webbing and feet to keep him from falling.

It was slow going. Peter had barely climbed twenty feet when he had to stop. His right arm was extended over his head, his left tucked to his side. He leaned forward, head resting on the brick wall as he tried to catch his breath, tried to stop the nausea from winning.

He looked up. He could see the edge of the roof. He just had another fifteen-twenty feet to go?

He shot another web, pulled tight and let his feet take another step up the wall.

Then the nausea won.

He leaned to the side, cough twice and vomited. His ears were still ringing, his shoulder throbbing, and for the second time that day, Peter felt like he was falling.

Only this time he wasn’t.

He felt the strong metal wrap under his arms, beneath his knees before that familiar sense of free fall disappeared.

“Jesus Christ, kid.” Tony’s face was hidden behind the Iron Man mask, but Peter still gave him a lopsided grin as he clumsily wiped the left over vomit from his mouth.

“Can you wait to yell at me until we get the knife out?”

 

Tony waited until they were at the tower, faceplate lifting the moment they landed, before he began to yell.

“Bruce!?” he bellowed, storming through the tower, Peter still held awkwardly in his arms.

“I can walk,” Peter pointed out.

Tony didn’t even look at him. “Shut up.”

“What the hell?” Bruce spluttered the moment Tony and Peter rounded the corner. “Is that a knife? I thought he was sidelined?”

“He was,” Tony said, turning sideways to carry Peter through the door. “But he’s an idiot.”

“It wasn’t—“ Peter began, but Tony shook his head, his eyes sharp.

“Nope. You start talking, I start yelling, and I thought we agreed to wait until the knife was out.”

He gently sat Peter on the exam table and backed away as the suit disengaged, revealing a worn pair of sweat pants and a grease stained shirt. “Other than the obvious, are there any other injuries?” Tony asked, grabbing a pair of scissors to begin cutting away Peter’s shirt.

Peter reached for the pouch with the device and said, “The disc disrupts the signal—“

“Forget the disc,” Tony said, cutting the pouch’s strap, pulling it away and tossing it roughly onto the desk behind him with a loud thud. “Injuries, list them.”

“My ear’s messed up,” Peter admitted.

“That it?”

“I think so.”

Tony seemed…satisfied? Relieved? It was hard to tell because the anger didn’t leave his face.

“I’m sorry,” Peter whispered.

“I’m assuming since May hasn’t called asking where you are that she’s not expecting you home. Where does she think you are?” Tony asked, grabbing Peter’s chin and turning it to the side so he could look at his bloody ear.

“I was supposed to spend the weekend at Ned’s.”

Tony turned his head back to face him. “While you were grounded?”

“Time served with good behavior,” Peter explained. “Besides it was just Ned’s. No Spider-Man.”

Tony arched an eyebrow and gestured to the knife.

“I technically didn’t break the rules,” Peter pointed out.

“Is that so?” Tony moved to the side as Bruce began scanning Peter’s shoulder.

“I didn’t wear the suit.”

“No, you did not.”

“And it was an emergency.”

“Not a real one.”

“Cap asked.”

“Oh, he’s in trouble, too. Don’t worry.”

“What? Are you gonna ground him, too?” Peter asked.

“Something like that.”

“I know you two have some cute daddy issues you’re working through right now,” Bruce interrupted, “but can we pause the teenage angst until we get the knife out?” He gave them each a pointed stare before turning back to the scans displayed on a large screen.

Half the screen displayed vitals; heart rate, temperature, blood pressure. The other half showed an x-rayed image of his shoulder. The knife looked to be about three inches long, give or take, and all things considered…

“It’s not that bad,” Peter observed.

“No?” Tony asked, tone mocking

“No,” Peter insisted. “I’ve had worse.”

Tony was unimpressed. “So if I reach up and wiggle it, it’ll, what? Tickle?”

“Tony,” Bruce cautioned.

Tony gave one more angry glance at Peter before turning his attention to Bruce. “What’s the damage?”

Bruce looked at the scan. “You said he heals fast?”

“Yeah,” Tony and Peter said together.

“Then he should be fine,” Bruce said with a shrug. “Doesn’t mean it won’t hurt like a bitch.”

Tony nodded and turned to walk away. “Dope him up if you can, stitch the wound while I decide whether or not I’m gonna call Aunt Hottie and get us both yelled at.”

“Mr. Stark—“

“Nope,” Tony raised his hand, his back still turned as he made his way out of the room. “Still not listening. I have someone else to yell at, you’ll have to wait your turn.”

Peter let his head fall back on the pillow, and clenched his jaw. “He won’t even let me explain,” he whined (yes, whined.)

Bruce sighed as he pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. “I’m staying out of it,” he said, poking gently at the area around the knife.

It hurt.

A lot.

“Are you even a medical doctor?” Peter heard himself asking before he could think better of it. It was rude, or it sounded rude, anyway. And what was the saying about an angry Bruce?

Bruce, however, simply arched a brow and gestured to the empty doorway. “Do you want me to let Tony do it?”

Peter shook his head. “Not particularly.”

“Alright then.” Bruce stepped away and began to dig through the cabinets.

“I didn’t mean that to be—“

“I know, kid. Relax,” Bruce laughed, pulling out packages of sterile wrapped supplies. “I think there’s enough for you to worry about without adding my feelings in the mix. Besides, I work with Tony. I’ve developed a thick skin.”

As though speaking his name had summoned him, Tony’s voice filtered through the door. Tony Stark had a way of speaking to let people know he was mad without outright yelling. It was sardonic, patronizing, and completely full of disappointment.

“What did I say?” Tony asked, and Peter forced himself into a sitting position so he could see who Tony was talking to.

Steve and Sam were standing in the hall. Sam had his arms crossed, his eyes looking worriedly towards Peter.

Steve had his hands on his hips, his face angry as he faced Tony. “Peter is perfectly capable—“

“What did I say, Rogers? Huh? The one thing I said?” Tony held up a finger for emphasis, his voice still patronizingly calm. “What about you, Sam? You were there. What did I say?”

“Tony, you’re being—,“ Steve began, but Tony obviously didn’t want to hear it because he cut Steve off.

“Sam?”

Sam broke his staring contest with Peter and faced Tony as he muttered, “Don’t bring the kid into this.” It was spoken quietly, and Peter almost missed it, spider senses or not.

“Exactly!” Tony exclaimed, voice finally rising. “The _one_ thing I said. This doesn’t concern him. It’s not his mess to clean up.”

“We didn’t have a choice,” Steve insisted.

“Not getting a sixteen-year old kid to do your dirty work is a choice!”

 _“This_ coming from you?”

“Stark, we were trying to stop another international incident.”

“Yeah, well congratulations. You did it. Maria Hill will get the device, SHIELD’s hands are still clean, and I’ve got a kid with a stab wound. Everybody’s happy.”

Before Steve or Sam could respond, Bruce was pushing Peter back onto the pillow. “Alright, Peter. Deep breaths,” he ordered as he placed a plastic mask over his face. “This should knock you out.”

Peter took a deep breath and said, “Oh, that won’t work onnnn…”              

Okay, so maybe it would.

 

* * *

 

Peter dreamt of spiders, of closed spaces and constricted lungs. He dreamt that he was swinging through the city, arms stretched taught, muscles aching at the strain before he ran out of web fluid mid-air, his stomach dropping as he plummeted to the ground.

He woke with a gasp. He was still lying in the med bay, the lights dimmed and the door closed. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but someone had thought to cover him with a blanket. Peter looked at his shoulder only to find a small bandage taped in place, the hint of a greenish fading bruise peeking out from beneath the gauze.

Tony was sitting beside him, feet propped on the bed as he played with a phone. Peter’s phone.

“Do you know why I’m mad?” Tony asked, voice low and calm, not once looking up from the screen before him.

 “Because I,” Peter began only to cough when his dry throat protested. He swallowed a few times, licked his lips and tried again. “Because I went on a mission even though I was grounded.”

“No, I’m annoyed at that,” Tony said, shaking his head slowly, eyes still on the phone’s screen. The bright light caused the shadows on his face to look darker, the lines deeper. “Annoyed, maybe a little irritated, but that’s not why I’m mad. No. I’m mad because everyone I know seems to think that they know better than me, that my motives are selfish, my opinions inconsiderate. Sometimes they’re right, I’ll admit it. But not always.”

“Mr. Stark—“ Peter stopped talking when Tony finally looked up, his expression hard, eyes narrowed, jaw tense.

“I’ve made mistakes,” Tony admitted. He kept his voice even, almost calm, and it made it hard for Peter to meet his eyes. He almost wished the man would just start yelling. “A lifetime of them, and whether they,” --he made a gesture towards the closed door, seemingly indicating the people beyond— “believe it or not I’m trying to make up for them. And you…you’re supposed to be different, kid. You’re not supposed to be like us.”

“What’s wrong with being like you?” Peter asked.

Tony blinked and just stared at Peter for a few seconds. When he dropped his feet to the ground, Peter thought he was going to get up and leave, but Tony just leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees as he tiredly rubbed his forehead.

“You know, May once told me we didn’t deserve you,” he said after several long seconds.

May had said the same to Peter once, that Tony didn’t know what he had, that the Avengers didn’t deserve him. Peter didn’t like it when she said things like that—it made him feel like someone might hear her, that they might misinterpret her words and he’d be in danger of being left behind. “What did you tell her?”

Tony looked up, met Peter’s eyes and quietly said, “That I agreed.”

Apparently, Peter’s face must have done something weird, like show just how he felt about that statement, because Tony got up and sat on the bed, his hip bumping gently against Peter’s leg as he leaned towards him.

“Alright, Peter, listen,” Tony said, raising two fingers and pointing at his eyes, silently ordering Peter to look at him and to pay attention. “I can literally count the number of people that I truly care about on one hand, okay? I’m talking actually care about, like, true friends, would literally feel their absence kind of care, do you understand?”

Peter didn’t trust his brain to speak, so he simply nodded.

“You’re on that list, kid,” Tony said. “So when I make these rules, when I set limits, it’s not because I’m trying to be an asshole, I do it because I do not want you hurt. Got it.”

“Yeah, I-I got it.”

Tony leaned back, but he made sure to keep eye contact. “Good. Because that list seems to be getting smaller and smaller every year, and I’ll be damned if the reason you fall off of it is because you’re being a fucking idiot who goes and gets himself killed.”

Tony must have reached his limit with the emotional stuff because, without giving Peter a chance to respond, he turned and stared at the wall, his shoulders drooping as he rubbed at his neck. He looked uncomfortable, probably because he’d just admitted to having feelings.

“How’s the shoulder?” he asked.

“Sore,” Peter admitted, cutting him some slack and allowing the subject to change. He flexed his fingers, relieved to feel that the numbness and tingling had disappeared. “What did Dr. Banner give me?”

“The same stuff we give Cap when he needs to be sedated.” Tony looked down at the phone still in his hand, tapped it gently against his palm before letting it drop onto Peter’s stomach. “So, I called Ned, by the way. Apparently his mom isn’t home so if you’re up to it, I can get Happy to drop you off. You know, if you’re still committed to this little _I-follow-the-rules_ charade you’ve got going on. “

“Seriously?” Peter had been afraid to ask what would happen next. He was honestly surprised that his Aunt hadn’t already been called.

Tony gave what Peter interpreted as a small, self-deprecating smile (something that looked somewhat alien on Tony’s face) and said, “Yeah, well, I just got through with one yelling match, not really feeling like getting into another. And I think we both know what would happen if I called May and said you’d been stabbed on what was supposed to be a SHIELD ran mission.”

Peter knew exactly what would happen, and he very much wanted to avoid it. Tony’s disappointment Peter was learning to deal with. It hurt, but it never lasted long. After the whole ferry incident, Tony had made sure to use Peter’s “fuck-ups” (his words) as a learning experience. Peter was told what he did wrong, Peter was punished, everyone moved on.

May’s disappointment lingered.

And where as Tony’s was always laced with a bit of anger, May’s disappointment always came with a look of fear, like she knew it wasn’t just an error, a poorly made decision. She always looked like she knew he could have _died_. So, yeah, Peter was all for not cluing her in on his latest mishap. There was no reason to tell her about the man with the knife…

“The guy saw my face,” Peter suddenly realized, and any relief he’d felt at hearing he didn’t have to tell May completely disappeared.

“And then you gave him one hell of a concussion,” Tony pointed out with a shrug. “And besides, it was just your face. So he knows you’re a kid, this is a big city. Lots of kids here.”

“You’re not worried?”

“I’m always worried,” Tony said, before jumping off the bed and giving Peter’s leg a reassuring pat, “but no. You’ll be fine. Friday canned anything their cameras might have picked up, Cap and Sam took care of the stragglers, and the rest, well, they can’t really do anything about you taking the disc without admitting they took it first, so, all in all? I call it a win. Or a tie. Let’s call it a tie, since you did, you know, get stabbed. PS, you can add another two weeks onto your grounding.”

Tony had his hand on the doorknob, the door halfway open when he turned around and pointed a finger warningly at Peter. “Also, if you pull that loophole bullshit again, I’m burning the suit.”

Peter thought it’d best not to remind him that he’d made it fireproof.

 

* * *

 

Peter made it back to Ned’s apartment a full two hours before Ms. Leeds made it home from work. If she noticed how tired Peter looked or that the Lego set was still unopened, she didn’t say anything. She simply wished the boys goodnight, reminded them not to make a mess, and then promptly disappeared into her bedroom.

They ended up sleeping until eleven the next day, rising in time to eat an early lunch and finally crack open the Lego set.

It was as they were sorting through the pieces that Peter’s phone decided to chime, alerting him to a text message. “Dude, hand me that?” he asked, pointing to the charging phone resting next to Ned.

Peter had one hand held out waiting, the other still focused on sorting out the pieces of Legos before him. When too many seconds passed without a phone, Peter looked up to find Ned staring at the phone with a look of bewildered excitement.

“Ned?”

“Dude,” Ned laughed, finally handing over the phone. “Is that really Captain America’s phone number?”

“What?” Peter grabbed the phone and looked at the screen. He had a single text notification from Captain Asshole/flag emoji. “I didn’t…” he said, trailing off as he clicked on the message. It was short, a simple “ _Sorry, Peter. I’ll talk to Tony about the grounding thing._ ”

Huh. He clicked on the name and grinned as he zoomed in on the contact photo. It was a picture of Steve Rogers’ face photo shopped onto a bald eagle, a series of fireworks in the background exploding to spell out the word _’Murica_.

“Captain Asshole?” Ned asked.

“Yeah, it’s a long story,” Peter said. At least now he knew what Tony was doing with his phone.

 


	3. A Bit Stalkerish, Don't You Think?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter had plans. Those plans had not included MJ, at least not at first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw it. I'm not talking about it. This is my way of pretending Infinity War didn't happen.

It started on a Tuesday.

It was nothing drastic, nothing that could be classified as dramatic in anyway. But that was just MJ; intense in an ironical display of not giving a fuck.

 

Peter was in detention. The room was crowded, the majority of the students stationed near the back of the room, phones discreetly hidden beneath their desks, their eyes focused anywhere but on the image of Captain America scowling disapprovingly from the dust covered TV.

Coach Wilson, in usual style, seemed completely indifferent to the teens’ suffering. He’d taken roll, read off the usual list of rules (no cell phones, no talking, no food or drink, no leaving, no enjoying life in any form), and pressed play on the agonizingly familiar video. He was now leaned back in his chair, a pair of headphones dangling from his ears as he scrolled through his phone. If Peter listened, he could just make out the sound of old school Beyonce filtering through the speakers.

Peter looked at the clock on the wall and frowned. It was stuck at 11:14, the batteries having died long ago with clearly no one caring enough to bother changing them out. A quick glance at his wrist showed it was only 3:26. He still had another thirty-four minutes before he was free.

He looked around, made sure no one was looking and slowly let his thumb run along the edge of his watch, smiling as the face shifted, the numbers disappearing to make way for a series of icons.

Mr. Stark had designed it to look unassuming, to blend in with any other smart watch the idiots on the street loved to play with. Or so that’s what he had said.

_“If you want the world to think you’re a muggle, kid, don’t walk around with your wand out. That didn’t come out right. Ignore what I just said. Just, here. Take the watch. Do not leave your house without it. And don’t let anyone play with it.”_

Peter didn’t think it was the most inconspicuous thing. He honestly didn’t think Tony Stark was capable of inconspicuous. Everything the man touched had to come with a bit of flair, Peter’s new watch included.

He knew it came with a GPS tracker, Tony had admitted as much, listing a series of reasons, the most glaring being the unspoken reminder that he had a newfound tendency to get into trouble when not in his suit, Peter Parker being just as likely to get in a bind as Spider-Man.

There was also a panic button with a direct line to Friday. If Peter ever got in over his head, a quick click of a button, a tap on the little crying spider symbol, and help would be on the way.

Peter’s favorite was the interface with his suit’s AI. Karen was literally just a button away. He was careful not to press that icon, not in a room full of unknowing civilians. He was pretty certain Tony had made it so that Karen would know when she could and couldn’t talk, but Peter didn’t want to risk it. Not here.

He let his wrist drop down and looked around the room. Three students looked like they were asleep. One had given up the charade and had her phone propped on her desk as she watched a muted makeup tutorial.

One guy looked like he was actually working on homework.

Peter yawned, hooked his toe on the leg of the nearest empty desk and pulled it towards him. A few students looked his way at the sound, but they quickly went back to their own little worlds. Peter propped his feet on the desk and let his head fall back to lean against the wall. Maybe if he fell asleep, the next thirty minutes would actually be bearable.

That was the plan. But MJ didn’t give a crap about his plans. She never had.

Peter must have fallen asleep because he missed the sound of the door opening, didn’t notice the way she casually ambled through the rows of desk. The spider was used to her, recognized she wasn’t a threat, so of course it didn’t bother alerting him. Would have been nice if it had, though. It might have saved him a little embarrassment.

“You’re not failing English Lit.” she said, pulling the desk out from under his feet. His shoes hit the ground with an unexpected thud, an equally unexpected squawk escaping Peter’s throat. She was standing over him, face relaxed in a bored sort of pout.

Peter hastily straightened himself and frowned. “Um…no, I’m not.”

“That wasn’t a question,” she said, one hand on her hip, the other on her backpack strap. “It’s an order. You fail English Lit, you’re off the team. I have two years left in this hell hole, and I refuse to spend my afternoons listening to Flash Thompson revel in the glory that is unseating you in your spot on the team because you were too stupid to grasp the concept of an annotated bibliography.”

Rude.

People were openly staring. Coach Wilson had even gone so far as to remove one of his earbuds, the corner of his mouth lifting up in amusement. What happened to that no talking rule?

Peter swallowed reflexively and tried to pretend he didn’t feel a blush rising up his neck. He hadn’t forgotten about their essay, not completely anyway. “I promise not to fail,” he told her. “I’ll work on it this weekend.”

“It’s due Friday.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” she said, clearly unimpressed as she dropped her bag to the ground and plopped down on the desk. “That’s why I’m going home with you.”

“What? No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

And she did.

She took the train with him, asking him a series of questions that did nothing but highlight just how much Peter was behind.

“Have you picked a topic?”

“Do you have an outline yet?”

“Have you bothered checking out any books?”

“Do you even remember where the school library is, or did that spider bite wipe your memory?”

“Not in public, MJ,” he hissed looking around the train. No one was paying them any attention and she knew it, told him as much. God, he was going to kill Ned for telling her.

“Ned, didn’t tell me, asswipe. We’ve been over this already. Anyway, I’m pretty sure both May and Stark said you had to keep up your grades if you wanted to keep playing dress up,” she gave him a knowing look and (thank Thor) lowered her voice. “This paper is twenty-five percent of our grade and you’re already borderline.”

“I have a B,” Peter defended. He wasn’t failing, he hadn’t let his grades fall that far. Hell, he still had an A in half of them, at least the ones that came natural. “And it’s a high B, that’s hardly failing.”

“No, but you forget to turn this paper in and it automatically drops you down to a C,” she pointed out and yeah, okay, she had a point. Still wouldn’t be failing (but it would kick him off the decathlon team).

He sighed, focused his eyes on the cartoon penis someone had drawn on the train’s window and admitted that no, he hadn’t been to the library (but he still knew where it was), and that it was fine, they were allowed to use online sources (most of the books were online anyway, chill, MJ).

May was sat at the kitchen table when they arrived. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her glasses perched low on her nose as she squinted angrily at her laptop. That angry squint, however, quickly morphed into a look of surprised amusement the moment MJ walked through the door.

“She’s gonna help me with homework,” Peter explained. “We’ve got a paper due Friday.”

“Is that right?” May said, her tone light, suggestive, and completely mortifying.

“And Peter hasn’t even started on it,” MJ pointed out. Unhelpful. Rude.

“Is that right?” May’s tone was no longer playful. She looked at Peter, her face stern, eyebrow arched disapprovingly. “Well, thank you, MJ, for helping him.”

“No problem,” MJ shrugged, “I’m only doing this for purely selfish reasons. He fails, I’m forced to acknowledge that Flash is an actual member of the decathlon team.”

“Still,” May said, her smile returning as she looked at MJ, her tone once again playful, “your sacrifice is still appreciated. Would you like some juice?”

Peter rolled his eyes. They raided the fridge, reluctantly accepted a plate of May’s homemade zucchini bread, and made their way to Peter’s room.

“Door stays open,” May called from the kitchen, because of course this wasn’t mortifying enough.

“May!” Peter hissed.

Apparently it _wasn’t_ mortifying enough because MJ, not bothering to keep her voice down, decided to say, “Just leave it open, dork. It’s not like I’m looking to lose my virginity on a bunkbed anyway.”

Lovely.

And thus began a pattern.

* * *

Most times Ned was there, sometimes it was just the two of them, but Peter noticed a distinct increase in the amount of time he spent with MJ. It wasn’t a drastic change. For a long time, Ned had been Peter’s only friend, but adding another wasn’t as hard as Peter thought it would be. Making room for MJ in the mix was as easy as moving down a few seats at lunch, making sure there was a Lego free spot for her to sit and read while they “got their dork on”, and expanding their array of snacks on movie nights.

“I don’t do gummies. The moment they get in your mouth and get wet they feel like a lumpy loogey.”

“That’s disgusting, MJ.”

“Yes, it is. Which is why I don’t eat them.”

It hadn’t been a conscious decision, at least not on Peter’s end. It had started with her offering (forcing) help with an essay, and sort of just…morphed. It wasn’t supposed to be anything more than that. But that Tuesday was followed by a Wednesday, which led to a Monday, and by the following Friday, Peter realized he’d made a new friend.

There was also the added benefit that Peter’s grades actually improved. But so did MJ’s, because while she was a genius when it came to things like literary analyses, historical timelines, and translating the confusion that was Beowulf, Peter was a natural when it came to differential equations and calculating the molecular fraction of a chemical concentration.

“It’s a quid pro quo, Parker. You scratch my back, I scratch yours.”

And they did.

Ned loved it. He was no longer alone when Peter was off saving the city. He no longer had to worry if Peter was going to bail on him (again) because Captain America or Iron Man had asked for help because MJ turned out to be a nerd too and was willing to binge watch old Buffy reruns or offer helpful constructive criticism (heavy on the criticism) for Ned’s cosplay costumes. And he actually had someone other than Peter to talk to about the whole Spider-Man thing because, dude, is that not the coolest thing ever?!?!

“Totally. I can hardly contain my excitement.” She might act like it was no big deal, but Peter was pretty sure he caught her smiling the first time she saw him crawl across his ceiling.

May loved it because it was something normal, something an average teenage boy would do.

“It’s normal to have friends.”

“I’ve always had Ned.”

“Friends, sweetie. Plural. She’s good for you, both you and Ned.”

 Peter wasn’t sure how Tony felt about it.

“MJ is a girl?”

“Yes.”

“A girl who’s a friend, or a girlfriend? Because those require different talks.”

“It’s MJ, she’s just a friend.”

“So no Talk talk needed?”

“God no.”

Except maybe that had been a little lie. Not really. Scratch that. It wasn’t a lie. Not at the time, but Peter figured he’d have to revisit that discussion later because it was a Thursday when he caught himself staring across the classroom, looking at MJ as she leaned over her math worksheet, that little wrinkle of frustration formed between her eyebrows as she worked through the problems. It was as he looked down, mentally acknowledging that she hadn’t worn that top in a while that he froze.

Well shit.

No.

He purposely avoided looking at her for the next two hours. It was his new goal in life to act normal, to rewire his brain before he went home that day and reset it to factory settings. MJ was his friend. She scowled, called him names, mocked him for liking Legos, and always had a comment (not a compliment) on the way he looked in his suit.

But she also made sure he got his homework done, had started carrying peanut butter and chocolate chip granola bars in her bag for when he looked peaky, and texted him to make sure he was okay after she’d watched the evening news and seen that Spider-Man had a bad day. She’d even started texting him when she thought that Peter had a bad day.

No. This was not happening.

Just act normal, no big deal.

Except Peter kinda sucked at that.

By the time lunch rolled around, MJ had obviously caught on to Peter’s little charade, to his plan to hit factory reset and resume the mental role of _just friends._ But MJ didn’t give a crap about his plans. She never had.

She slammed her tray down in front of him, the little puddle of instant mashed potatoes jiggled in its assigned slot and slopped onto the table. “Why are you being weird?”

“What?” he asked, eyes wide, face innocent. “I’m not—I’m not being weird.”

MJ was not impressed. She cut her eyes to Peter’s left and prompted, “Ned?”

“You’re totally being weird, dude,” Ned supplied, most unhelpfully, around a bite of turkey and cheese.

Peter rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Ned.”

Ned swallowed and reached for his pudding cup. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“Seriously, Parker. Spill it,” MJ ordered. She pushed her tray to the side, making room on the table so she could lean forward, her spine curving into a slumped pose as she narrowed her eyes at Peter in what he assumed was meant to be a threatening, demanding expression. Peter just thought it was cute.

Well shit.

“I’m not being weird,” he insisted and focused on the bowl of leftover spaghetti in front of him. “I’m just…thinking.”

“Thinking about doing something stupid?” she asked, one eyebrow raising questioningly.

Peter dropped his fork and frowned. “What? Why would you ask that?”

“Because historically speaking, you don’t have the best track record with thinking and decision making, at least not since you got bit,” Ned answered for her. MJ smirked and pointed at Ned, clearly agreeing.

“You two are the worst friends ever,” Peter grumbled as he stabbed at his spaghetti. He could feel the noodles crunch beneath the plastic fork. Aunt May called it al dente. Peter called it undercooked. “I’m gonna start sitting by myself.”

It was an empty threat, and they knew it. MJ leaned further in and said, “Tell me, or I text Un-Happy Hogan and tell him you’re up to no good.”

Peter blinked. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would,” she insisted, eyebrow inching higher. “That’s why Stark gave me his number, as a preventive measure to your idiocy.”

“Snitches get stitches,” Ned whispered, sounding somewhat uncomfortable yet awed by the stare down taking place between his two friends.

MJ wasn’t fazed. “So do bug boys who do stupid shit.”

She used to not care about what happened to him as Spider-Man. He once came to school with the remains of a still healing black eye. She’d looked at it, scowled, and said, “You know that makes you look like a dumbass, right? What are you telling people happened?”

“Uh…that I fell.”

“So a clumsy dumbass. Nice.”

But a few weeks ago, he’d missed school. It was just a day, but it’d followed a rather bad run in with some rather bad guys, and MJ tended to stay up to date on current events.

He’d woken up, face down on the couch to find her staring at him, her feet tucked under her knees as she sat on the coffee table.

“May let me in,” she said, her eyes staring at his bare back.

“It’s not that bad,” he’d said.

“You were burned,” she’d said.

“It’ll heal.”

“So I was told.”

Ever since then, she’d taken an uncharacteristically intense concern in what he got up to when wearing his suit. So yeah, he could kind of understand why she was glaring at him in the middle of the cafeteria, a worried pinch to her forehead.

“I’m not planning on doing anything stupid,” he assured her, hoping his sincerity came through. “This has nothing to do with…that bug thing. Promise”

MJ continued to stare, her head tilting to the side in consideration. With her eyes still locked on his, she propped her elbow on the table, extended her little finger and said, “Pinky swear it.”

“What?” Peter asked, looking at her hand like he expected her to slap him. It was MJ, it could happen.

“Pinky swear you aren’t planning on doing something that could get you killed,” she said. Her finger was still extended.

“Or maimed,” Ned added.

Peter was about to ignore them both, to push away her hand and tell her to quit joking around, but her expression was firm, like she might be serious and wasn’t simply waiting for the perfect moment to mock him.

Keeping eye contact, Peter hastily wiped his clammy hand on his jeans before extending his little finger and locking it with hers. “I pinky swear I’m not planning on doing anything stupid,” he said.

MJ squeezed her finger once, seemingly sealing the deal, before letting her hand drop. She grabbed her fork and began sorting through the food on her tray, shifting the inedibles from the not with her familiar air of disinterest, like they hadn’t just reverted back to fourth grade negotiation tactics in the middle of the cafeteria.

Peter didn’t really know what to do with that. Based on the fact that Ned was staring at MJ with a look of bemused concern, a spoonful of pudding waiting unforgotten halfway to his mouth, he too was a little thrown off.

But MJ being MJ didn’t let the awkwardness linger. She stabbed a chicken finger with her fork, dipped it in ketchup, and brought it to her mouth. She met Peter’s eye, gave him what looked like a half-smile and said in a surprisingly fond tone, “Losers.”

Maybe he’d hold off on the whole factory reset thing. 

* * *

 

Four Tuesdays had passed by the time Peter decided to just accept it. He liked her. Like _like_ liked her.

Karen didn’t see anything wrong with it.

“MJ seems like a nice girl, Peter.”

“MJ doesn’t really _do_ nice,” Peter corrected, “But yeah, she is.” He was in his room, sitting on his bed in nothing but his boxers and mask, his attention split between the AI and the video game he’d been playing for the past two hours. Aunt May was in the living room watching reruns of The Nanny on TV.

“Then why can’t you tell her how you feel?” Karen asked, and she sounded generally confused, like her programming couldn’t process the concept of social suicide.

Peter shrugged. “Because I kind of want her to stick around. “

There was a pause. “I do not understand.”

Peter sighed and pressed pause on his game. “I’m about a thousand percent certain MJ just likes me as a friend, and even that’s a still relatively new development. If I tell her I like her like _that_ …she’ll run away. Or punch me. Either is a possibility when it comes to her.”

“You had feelings for Liz,” Karen reminded him. “And she didn’t run away when you told her you liked her.”

Peter un-paused his game. “Liz is in Oregon, Karen.”

“Not because you admitted you had feelings for her.”

She had a point.

Still…

* * *

 

Karen was a freaking traitor.

It was late, probably past his curfew late, but he was adamantly not checking the time. He was perched on a fire escape, the balls of his feet balancing carefully on the railing as he squatted down, shoulders hunched as he scanned the empty alley below.

He thought he’d heard something, but so far he couldn’t see anything.

“Incoming call from MJ,” Karen signaled, displaying an image of a sarcastically smiling MJ, middle finger extended towards the camera on his mask’s display. “Why do you have an angry face emoji by her name?”

“Do not answer,” he said, climbing down to get a closer look.

“Why not?” Karen asked, and Peter didn’t like the tone of her voice. Had Mr. Stark programmed her to sound so…mischievous?

He dropped down to the ground. “Just let it go to voicemail,” he whispered. He still didn’t see anything, but better safe than sorry.

“ _What’s up, dork_?” MJ’s voice filtered through his mask, sounding much too loud for the quiet alley.

What the fuck? Peter raised his hands in frustration and frowned, hoping the AI picked up on it. “Karen!?”

“I’m sorry, Peter. I must have misunderstood you,” Karen replied, and Peter was definitely going to talk to Mr. Stark about her programming. “Also, my sensors are detecting someone approaching.”

Peter turned in time to see a door open. Two masked men walked out, the bags on their backs overloaded with something that looked strangely like laptops and DVD players.

“ _I thought we could go over the study guide for History_ ,” MJ explained. Peter could hear the sound of paper rustling over the line. _“Or are you still trying to ignore me?”_

“No, I’m not ignoring you,” he said, just as one of the men turned his way. Peter saw the man raise his arm, a shiny silver gun in his gloved hand. “I’m just kinda busy here, MJ.”

_“Multi-tasking is good for brain development and we have a test tomorr—are those gunshots?”_

“Yes, they are,” Karen answered. “The police have been notified, Peter, and I’d like to remind you that your suit is not bullet proof.”

“Don’t need reminding,” Peter said through gritted teeth. He flung out a web and grabbed the gun, smiling at the way the man’s eyes widened in surprise. Seriously? Haven’t they heard of him by now? “I’ll call you back later, MJ. Karen, hang up.”

 _“Do not hang up on me!”_ MJ ordered. _“I’ll be quiet.”_

The first man was taken care of, his gun gone, his hands webbed to the wall. Peter had his arms raised ready to take care of the second man, but he wasn’t fast enough. He was just about to bring his fingers back to fire a web when the little hairs on his arms stood on end and he instinctively ducked.

“Son of—what the hell, man?” Peter asked as dust from the bullet riddled bricks above his head rained down. “That is just rude. Didn’t your momma teach you about manners?”

_“Are you smack talking the man with the gun?”_

“Thought you were gonna be quiet?” Peter asked as he fired his web, swinging around the bad guy, wrapping him up like a gift, and leaving him to hang upside down for good measure.

_“And I thought you had common sense. Seems like a no brainer not to piss off the people shooting at you.”_

“I agree with MJ, Peter,” Karen added.

 _“Thank you, Karen_ ,” MJ said, and Peter swore he could hear her smile.

“You are most welcome.” Little miss sassy was _soooo_ getting her programming looked at.

Peter shot a web and hoisted himself up to the edge of the building. He could see the lights from the police cars in the distance. “I hate you both.”

_“No you don’t, now, are you still being shot at or can we cover chapter twelve?”_

 

 

* * *

Mr. Stark once asked if Peter had a death wish. It was asked in exasperation, a little bit out of anger, and Peter had been quick to point out that no, he most certainly did not.

Except apparently he did.

Because he’d just kissed MJ.

It was an accident. Sort of. At least, in the same way that he sometimes said things out loud when he meant to just think them kind of accident.

He had thought about kissing her.

Didn’t mean he actually meant to freaking do it.

Ergo, Accident.

He was pretty sure that was how she was planning on making his death look, too.

It was Saturday. Early enough in the day that May wasn’t yet worried about when he’d be home, but late enough in the morning that Peter had already found trouble.

“Come on, man,” Peter pleaded, groaning as he tightened Ned’s belt around his thigh. “May can’t see this. She worries enough as it is.” They were on the roof of Ned’s building, tucked out of the way between an air conditioner unit and the entrance to the stairs.

Ned was still in his pajamas. MJ looked like she had dressed in a hurry. And Peter was bleeding everywhere. Normal Saturday.

“With good reason apparently,” MJ noted as she knelt down to look at the gash on Peter’s leg. She’d brought her dad’s first-aid kit, something Peter swore he needed to invest in. The large, black bag was sitting on the ground, close enough to reach but far enough that Peter wouldn’t bleed on it.

Peter hissed as MJ reached forward and lifted the torn material of his suit. He pulled his mask off and looked at the wound. “It’ll heal. I just—we just need to stop the bleeding till then,” he repeated for the third time. Both MJ and Ned still looked unimpressed. Well, MJ looked unimpressed. Ned looked panicked. “It looks worse than it actually is.”

“You are a fucking idiot. I swear,” MJ sighed, grabbing Peter’s wrist and reaching for his watch. She slid her thumb along the edge, activating the hidden icons. For a second, Peter thought she was about to press his panic button. But she bypassed the crying spider icon and went for the image of a heart with a large purple K in the center. “Karen,” MJ began, “is he gonna die if we ignore this?”

“Ignoring is not recommend,” Karen advised, causing MJ to look up at Peter with a scowl. “However, although the wound seems deep, it does not appear to have hit anything vital. My sensors detect that his advanced healing has already began.”

“Thank you, Karen,” Peter said, smirking when MJ rolled her eyes.

“My pleasure, Peter.”

“So…” Ned began, digging through the bag MJ had brought, “stitches?”

That was the next to last thing Peter wanted. Well, next to next to last. The next to last was for May to find out about this.

The last was to die from blood loss.

MJ reached in the bag and grabbed a sterile-packed suture kit. Peter took one look at the curved needle and cringed.

“Alright,” MJ said, pulling on a pair of gloves, “Strip, tiger.”

“You know what you’re doing?” he asked, loosening the belt above the wound. He balanced on one leg and pressed the emblem on his chest. Thanks to the sticky blood, the suit didn’t want to fall straight to the ground.

MJ simply gave it a pull, pulled out a pack of alcohol wipes and said, “I’ve watched a few YouTube videos.”

“I think I felt better before you said that,” Peter admitted. It was a sunny day, but he still felt cold standing on a roof in nothing but his underwear.

“It’s either me or jitter fingers over there,” MJ pointed out, head tilting to indicate Ned as she went about cleaning the cut. “Or we could go with my original plan and call Stark.”

“You’re fine,” Peter assured her. He reached out and gripped the edge of the air conditioner, letting his weight lean against it as he tried to ignore the sting. “It probably only needs like two, maybe three stitches.”

“They’re not gonna be pretty,” she warned and then proceeded to stitch him up.

It probably should have had three, but she finished with two. Peter was fine with that. She carefully cleaned it again and covered it with two Iron Man bandages. When Peter looked down and saw them, he quirked an eyebrow.

“Dad buys them for my brother,” she explained and gave his leg a little tap. She climbed to her feet, pulled off the gloves and let them fall to the ground. “Alright, you’re good to go. And by ‘go’ I mean go home, or I swear to god I will call Happy and tell him you spent the morning bleeding all over Queens.”

Peter meant to say “Thank you,” maybe even point out that it was hardly all over Queens, two blocks tops.

He kissed her instead.

It wasn’t anything special. One hand still holding onto the antique air conditioner vent, Peter reached out with the other and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her forward and planting a short, sweet peck right on her lips.

In front of Ned.

In his underwear.

Not at all how he’d planned the day to go. But MJ had a way of messing up his plans even when she didn’t do anything at all.

Peter quickly let her go. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She paused, eyes momentarily wide before falling back to something that looked a bit more disinterested and less surprised. “Don’t be.”

“We’re good?” he asked. Still whispering, like she wasn’t allowed to hear him. What a loser.

“Yeah. We’re good.” Oh good. She was whispering too.

She bent down, picked up the first-aid bag, kicked one of the bloody gloves to the side and said, “You’re still a loser.”

“I’m aware.”

And then she was gone, her head ducking down right before she went through the doorway. Peter liked to imagine she was smiling. He was.

“What the frack just happened?”

That was a very good question, Ned.

Let’s explore that later.

* * *

 

And they did. Explore that is. Not Ned. Ned wasn’t invited. In all honesty, Peter didn’t know _he_ was invited until MJ kissed him between the lockers right before Decathlon practice.

She pushed him against the wall, his hip hitting the water fountain just before she leaned in and planted a short, sweet peck right on his lips.

She didn’t say anything. Simply gave him an appraising, somewhat challenging glare, pulled a stack of notecards out of her back pocket, and turned to walk through the library doors. “Alright people. Let’s get started,” she called out, sounding very much like nothing had just happened.

Something had very much just happened, and it rattled Peter’s brain. So much so that he missed three questions during practice.

MJ didn’t look annoyed though. She looked a little proud.

Rude.

* * *

 

 

It was a Wednesday when he got a real kiss. With tongue, because apparently that was his life now, and he was more than okay with that.

He couldn’t stop smiling all through chemistry, even after Ned leaned in and asked, “Can you please stop doing that? You’re just rubbing it in at this point.”

Ned could get over it.

* * *

 

It was eleven Mondays later when Peter realized that he’d been missing out on life.

So MJ might not be up to losing her virginity on a bunkbed (might not be up to losing it at all at the moment, she made that clear) but it didn’t mean she wasn’t up for…other things.

May had caught on to the whole _yeah, we make out now_ thing and had forbidden Peter from having MJ over when May wasn’t home.

It was Monday morning during spring break which meant May was out. But so were MJ’s parents and they hadn’t enforced such rules.

MJ didn’t have a bunkbed.

She had a small twin pushed in the corner near the window. Her room was surprisingly feminine, a mixture of the little girl she used to be and the young woman she was morphing into. Peter looked around at the mounds of books, the framed photographs, and splattering of clothes and realized that the room almost looked like it belonged to a grown up.

Nothing like his, with his posters, and video games, and action figures. And the bunkbed.

The plan had been to lounge around, eat junk food, maybe make out for a bit, and watch a movie or two. That was it, honest to god.

And it made sense. Ned’s family had gone to New Jersey for the week, and since May had point blank made it clear MJ couldn’t be over without at least Ned to chaperone, that left MJ’s place.

It wasn’t Peter’s fault her parents had to work.

It also wasn’t his fault that MJ was getting bored with the usual make out routine and was willing to up the game.

It might not be his fault, but he certainly wasn’t about to blame MJ, especially since she was now straddling his lap.

She eased her fingers under the hem of his t-shirt, her nails scratching softly against his stomach, his ribs, and holy shit did that tickle.

She paused, made eye contact and asked, “Are you okay with this?”

Peter nodded. He wasn’t entirely certain what _this_ was gonna be, but she’d already said what it wasn’t so he figured, yeah, he was up for it. Definitely okay. Oh, apparently she wanted verbal confirmation.

“Yes,” he said. He thought about trying to say something else, something to illustrate just how much he was okay with this, but she was sitting in his lap so she probably already knew…besides, she already had his shirt off so he just muttered another “yes” as she tossed it on the floor.

And then her shirt was on the floor, too.

Peter had once seen the Black Widow’s bra. It was an accident, sort of, more her fault than his, but still.

This bra was completely different. For starters it was an actual bra, not a sports bra. This one had strappy straps and it was blue and there was a little teeny tiny bow on the front right in the middle, and it dipped down hugging and highlighting these wondrous curves and it shifted slightly, moving each time its owner breathed.

But unlike the black sports bra Peter had gotten a glimpse of months before, this one was different because _this_ one he was actually allowed to look at.

And touch too, apparently, because MJ (her hands shaking as much as Peter’s) grabbed Peter by the wrists and carefully put one hand on her hip, the other on her ribcage, close enough that if Peter moved his thumb _just so_ it’d push up against the underside of her bra.

Peter had always enjoyed kissing MJ. It was just a fact. But it was quickly becoming apparent that kissing MJ without the hindrance of shirts was definitely better. She leaned in, pressing her chest against his, and okay, those were actual boobs touching him, and kissed him.

Then Peter’s phone began to ring.

They ignored it. But it kept ringing. And ringing. And shouldn’t it have gone to voicemail by now?

“Peter,” Karen’s voice suddenly sounded from Peter’s watch. “Mr. Stark advises you answer your phone.”

Peter locked his wide eyes on MJ, muttered an apology and reached in his pocket for his still ringing phone. It was a little awkward because MJ was still in his lap, but that was okay. He wasn’t about to ask her to move.

He slid his thumb across the screen and raised it to his ear. He was about to say hello, but Tony beat him to it.

“Where are you?”

Peter looked nervously at MJ. He hadn’t put it on speaker but he could tell she could hear what was being said. “…Home.”

“I’m going to ask you again and before you answer, I want to remind you that your fancy new watch has a GPS tracker in it,” Tony bit out, voice doing that weird _I’m not yelling but I’m still not happy_ thing. “It also records your vitals, and I’m looking at a heart rate of about 142, so you want to try that again?”

Peter and MJ both frowned and looked down at the watch blinking on Peter’s wrist. “Are you spying on me?”

“No,” Tony said, sounding a little insulted at the implication, “I was minding my own business when I got a notification that your heartrate was reaching high levels. Now you’re not in your suit, and I know you’re not home...”

“I’m…uh…” Peter began but he really didn’t want to tell Tony Stark that he was staring at second base.

MJ, of course, had no problem doing just that because she grabbed the phone out of Peter’s hand.

 “His heart rate is up because he’s participating in some sociable extra-curriculars and would like to get back to it if you’re done being a nosey perv.”

Peter could hear the silence on the other end of the phone before Tony’s surprised (slightly amused) voice said, “MJ, I presume.”

“Later, Stark.” MJ hung up and tossed the phone on the bed. She stared at it for a few seconds before turning to Peter and asked, “Did I just call Iron Man a pervert?”

Peter was busy pulling the watch from his wrist. “A nosey pervert, yes.”

MJ tossed the watch in a drawer for good measure.

* * *

 

It was Wednesday before Tony asked, “I thought she was just a friend?”

“She is,” Peter confirmed, remembered the fact that he’d officially seen her bra and quickly amended, “She was… I mean—“

“I also thought--“ Tony continued, “--that she was supposed to be helping you with your homework, you know, keep your grades up, not…other things.”

And the way Tony’s left eyebrow arched high and the _way_ he said “other things” had Peter looking to the floor, begging it to open up and swallow him whole.

“Oh god, can we please not talk about this?” The last thing Peter needed in his life was for Tony Freaking Stark to give him the Talk.

“Fine, kid. We won’t talk about it.”

And they didn’t.

That’s not to say Tony didn’t program Karen to do it.

“I’m sorry, Peter, but Mr. Stark has instructed that I’m not to turn back on the web shooters until he’s convinced that you understand where babies come from.”

“God, kill me now.”

“You are being unnecessarily dramatic. Now, lesson one…”

* * *

 

At the beginning of the year, his councilor made him write out a five year plan. It was one of those prepare for the future, make sure you’re on the right track to reach your goals kind of things.

Peter had written two. The first rambled on about colleges and internships and yada yada yada.

The second could basically be summed up as “Do not die.”

Neither plan included MJ.

But MJ didn’t give a crap about his plans. She never had.


	4. I Think I'm Losing My Religion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Growing up didn’t mean you made less mistakes, it just meant you were more aware of them.  
> And it sucked.
> 
> Or Spider-Man meets the God of Thunder and occasionally remembers how to smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's still cool to jump on the trope bandwagon, right? I can do that? Is it also okay if I steadfastly ignore canon?

“I just want it on the record that the internet thinks I’m funny,” Flash declared proudly. He held up his phone so Peter could see. “I’ve gotten over a thousand Likes. I’m hilarious. It’s canon.”

“It’s not called canon when you’re talking about real life,” Peter pointed out, pushing the phone out of his face, “It’s just called reality. And you just posted a video, it doesn’t mean you’re funny.”

Peter was starting to hate social media. He was starting to hate a lot of things, actually. Maybe _hate_ was a strong word. Unhappy perhaps? Yes, he was unhappy with a lot of things.

He was annoyed with his teachers and their relentless need to overload him with homework. He was tired of everyone treating him like a child. He knew he was young, but the ever present need to shelter him, ordering him to take a back seat, the constant reminder that the adults were talking…it was getting old.

May was swinging left and right between happy, loving, carefree aunt to dictator who wanted to control each and every little aspect of Peter’s life to the point that he couldn’t leave his bedroom, let alone the apartment without informing her where he was going, who he was going with, what time he’d be back, did he have his phone, was it fully charged, did Stark know about this, were his shoelaces tied, before kissing him gently on the forehead and saying “have a good day, sweetie.”

And he was beyond done with Flash and his freaking phone and the video he’d posted of Spider-Man honest to god _twitching_ after a paranoid tourist from Hicksville had read too many Facebook posts about the big bad city and thought a proper way to show his appreciation for a guy saving him from certain death was to jam a taser in the hero’s ribcage and scream while releasing 50,000 volts.

 “Are you pouting, Parker?” Flash was smirking, and Peter could hear the telltale _shlclick_ of his phone going off as he took a screen shot. “Maybe if you started posting videos of your good pal Spider-Man, people would love you too.”

Peter gritted his teeth and grabbed his milkshake.

Unhappy.

“Who invited you again?” MJ asked. She was sitting across from Peter, her arms folded on the table with an impressively bored look on her face.

Flash frowned. “You did.”

MJ frowned back. “That doesn’t sound right.” She looked to Peter and quirked her brow in question. “Did I invite him?”

“It was more of an open invitation,” Peter pointed out, “You said anyone on the team who wanted to study, and well...” he shrugged.

MJ closed her eyes in resignation. “Yeah, that sounds right.” She sighed and looked back down at her text book.

It wasn’t necessarily the best place to study but they had an all you can eat pizza bar and served the best strawberry milkshakes in Queens.

Also, the owners didn’t mind when seven teenagers pushed together three tables to spread out an impressive array of notecards, worksheets, textbooks, and double pepperoni extra cheese pizza slices.

Peter didn’t even know why he was here. He wasn’t paying attention, he wasn’t contributing, he wasn’t even eating.

His pizza sat to the side, grease seeping through the cheap paper plate to soak through his calculus notes. He took another sip of his milkshake.

Peter was unhappy and he didn’t know if there was even a reason. Sometimes it felt like there were too many reasons, too many things taking their turn to add to the crap fest that was turning into Peter’s life.

Other times Peter couldn’t even pinpoint what was wrong. He’d just sit on the edge of his bed, forehead creased as he tried to catalog what he was feeling, tried to identify exactly what was causing that worrying pit of anxiety to act up only to come up empty.

Then there were times like now when Peter knew exactly what was weighing him down.

Ned was sitting on Peter’s left, his phone out, the muted video of Spider-Man shakily trying to pull taser barbs out of his side playing out on the screen.

“Dude,” Peter muttered, putting his milkshake on the table.

Ned looked up, eyes wide as he hurried to put his phone away. “Sorry.”

Peter was officially done with the day. He closed his textbook, pushed the pizza off his notebook, and caught a highlighter before it fell to the floor. He grabbed his phone and was just about to reach around for his bag when MJ kicked him lightly under the table.

“Peter?” she asked. She was watching him, face pinched in confusion as he gathered his things. A quick glance to the side showed Ned and Cindy doing the same. The only one not paying attention to him was Flash, which was fine with Peter.

Peter opened his mouth, realized he didn’t really know what to say, and closed it again, because seriously, what was he supposed to say? _Flash hurt my feel bads and now I want to go home_?

Yes, that would go over splendidly.

“Are you leaving?” Ned asked, looking guilty as fuck and Peter realized Ned probably thought Peter was pissed he’d been watching the video.

He was a little.

But not enough to bail on him.

No, Peter’s desire to run away started long before he walked into Rao’s Pizzeria.

Peter thought things would change the older he got, that he’d make less mistakes, that he wouldn’t care what people thought of him. He thought he’d become a better superhero. That he’d just be better in general.

Growing up didn’t mean you made less mistakes, it just meant you were more aware of them.

And it sucked.

But he couldn’t exactly explain that to his friends.

Luckily he didn’t have to because his phone chose that exact moment to _ping,_ and given the choice between looking at Ned’s misery, MJ’s quiet judgment, or his phone…

It was a text message from Mr. Stark. “ _Just go with it_ ;)” it said. Nothing else. What the hell?

“Holy shit,” Flash whispered, and when Peter looked up it was to find Flash gaping at the restaurant’s entrance with a look of surprised awe.

MJ gave Peter’s shin another kick and gestured to the door. Frowning, Peter forgot his phone and looked over his shoulder.

Natasha Romanov was walking towards them. She was dressed in jeans and a loose fitting top, her hair pushed back by the pair of sunglasses she had resting on top of her head. The goal was to probably blend in with any other woman on the street, and she probably would have. Except that the table was full of teenagers in the full swing of puberty who had grown up in the age of the Avengers and it was going to take more than hair dye and knitted cotton to camouflage the Black Widow.

She squinted around the room, her eyes slowly scanning each table until they fell on Peter.

“Hey kid,” she greeted, offering a crooked smile as she sauntered towards the table. “Up for a ride?”

She held up a bike helmet and gestured towards the window. As one, all seven members of the decathlon team turned their heads and looked out the window on the far wall where a sleek, black motorcycle was parked at the meter.

“Holy shit,” Flash repeated, and Peter was thinking the same thing.

But he had enough sense not to voice it out loud. “What are you doing here?” Peter asked instead, which, okay, maybe that wasn’t any better. It definitely wasn’t better, especially not with the panicky tremble his voice decided to do.

Natasha’s face morphed into this weird expression of confusion and worry with an uncertain half-smile tossed in for good measure. She cast a quick glance around the table and hesitantly said, “Tony said the internship wasn’t a secret.”

“Holy shit.” Flash was stuck on repeat.

“Shut up, Flash,” Ned whispered, but boy did he sound happy.

And Natasha, bless her, smiled warmly and said, “Hey, Ned. How’ve you been?”

“Never better,” Ned beamed. Literally beamed with a wide, toothy smile and everything as Flash sat slack jawed one seat over.

Peter ignored them both. “This is about the internship?” he asked, remembering a moment later that Tony had sent a text.

Just go with it.

Natasha’s smile was now directed at Peter, her eyes widening slightly, hintingly, begging Peter to just play along. “There’s a meeting this evening, and he’d like you there.”

“Holy shit.”

Natasha frowned as she looked towards Flash.

“Ignore him,” Peter said, already stuffing his books into his backpack. “Why are---why are you picking me up? I mean…not that I’m not pleased to see you again, I just—“

“He was going to send Happy, but I was in the neighborhood.” Natasha was gifted in that she could cut off someone’s nervous and adrenaline fueled rambling without sounding rude.

Happy could take a lesson.

“You ready?” she asked, handing him the helmet.

“Totally,” he answered tightening his backpack straps and pulling the helmet over his head. He didn’t bother hiding his smile as Flash’s final “holy shit” followed him out the door.

* * *

 

When Natasha said there was a meeting, Peter had expected something like he’d seen on TV, where adults crammed into a conference room and stared at charts and graphs until someone eventually died of boredom--only instead of suits and ties there would be shields and guns and blasters.

What he got was an impromptu pizza party masquerading as a meet and greet.

Apparently, the God of Thunder was back in town…on planet…whatever.

Thor’s laughter was deep and strong and exactly what Peter dreamed it would be. It was the first sound he heard when he stepped off the elevator and it echoed down the hall as he rounded the corner.

The living area was like something out of a fanboy’s dream. Tony Stark was perched on the counter, his feet propped on a nearby stool, head thrown back as he laughed at whatever had just been said.

Rhodey and Pepper Potts were standing to the side, sharing a look of light hearted commiseration as they rolled their eyes.

Captain America was balancing a stack of pizza boxes, smiling as Clint Barton and Sam Wilson fought for the last piece of sausage and pepperoni.

Bruce Banner was sitting on the couch watching everyone with a reserved look of amusement as he steadily picked the olives off of his pizza. He looked to be stacking them in a neat little pile on the coffee table.

Thor himself was standing in the middle of everyone. His hair was pulled back in the messiest man bun Peter had ever seen, and holy crap the muscles. It was just an estimate but Peter was fairly certain Thor’s left bicep was bigger than Peter’s head. The man was beaming, arms spread wide as he finished off a story, the tiny beer bottle he held sloshing with each grand gesture.

Add to that the fact that Peter had just spent half an hour clinging to the Black Widow’s waist as she sped through Saturday afternoon traffic—yeah, Peter was actually feeling a bit giddy.

“Save me any?” Natasha asked, grabbing a box from Steve Rogers and effectively drawing everyone’s attention. Only the attention didn’t necessarily linger on _her_.

Peter smiled awkwardly, sweaty palms gripping the straps of his backpack as the Avengers all looked his way, expressions ranging from welcoming smiles to baffled confusion.

Peter waved.

Awkward.

But still awesome.

“Ah, you’re here,” Tony declared jumping off the counter. He grabbed a soda, slapped Thor on the arm and gestured to Peter. “Kid, meet Thor. Thor, this is the kid.”

“Peter Parker,” Peter elaborated as he extended his hand, silently hoping Thor didn’t take to calling him ‘the kid’, and whoa, were his hands big.

Thor smiled politely, shaking Peter’s hand as he studied him, clearly confused by his presence. “And what do you do here?”

“He’s Stark’s mentee,” Natasha explained. She’d made herself comfy on the couch, feet propped up next to Bruce’s forgotten olives.

Thor frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means Tony adopted a kid,” Clint added, pulling pepperoni from his pizza and stuffing them in his mouth.

“Oh!” Thor’s eyes widened as he looked down at Peter. He gave an approving nod and clapped Peter on the shoulder with enough force that Peter felt his knees shake and declared, “Welcome to the family.”

“Uh, What, no…” Peter began, shaking his head, “that’s not what that…” and okay, Thor was actually adorable when he smiled like that, all round cheeks and squinty eyes, “…thanks,” Peter finished with a baffled smile of his own.

Holy shit, indeed.

For the first time in a while, Peter was laughing, smiling, and generally enjoying himself. Unlike with the others, Peter had no problem asking Thor for a selfie, and Thor had no problem agreeing.

In no time at all, Peter had a series of pictures he was sending to Ned: Thor making a peace sign, Thor with crossed eyes as he stuck out his tongue, Thor smiling like a giant puppy, Thor looking completely flabbergasted as Peter took off his shoes and stood on the ceiling.

“Oh yeah,” Tony muttered distractedly around a mouthful of pizza, “the kid’s like half spider. He can stick to things.”

Unlike everyone else in Peter’s life, Thor didn’t question it. He didn’t demand to know what happened, didn’t seem to be interested in hearing all about how Peter got bit by a spider, or why he had chosen to fight crime.

Thor just sort of accepted it.

And unlike everyone else in Peter’s life, Thor didn’t seem bothered by the fact that Peter was still two months away from his sixteenth birthday.

Thor was quickly climbing the ranks on Peter’s list of favorite Avengers, and when May texted him wanting to know where he was, Peter sent her one of his and Thor’s selfies as an explanation—proof that he wasn’t currently dead in a gutter (and also as an incentive to get her to start talking about someone other than Steve Rogers, because lets be real, Peter might not know a lot about his aunt’s taste in men but if there was anyone that could knock Captain America off the top spot of May’s list of crush worthy superheroes, it was an actual, literal god.)

“You gonna crash here or do you want Happy to bring you home?” Tony asked hours later. The “party” had eventually died down, everyone slowly getting pulled away by one thing or another until it was just Peter, Tony, and Clint.

And Thor, but he was currently asleep on the couch.

“I don’t know,” Peter answered. He ran his fingers through his hair, winced as he snagged a few knots, and looked around. The room was a mess. Empty cups, beer bottles, and pizza boxes were strewn over almost every surface. Peter’s socks and shoes were still tucked under the coffee table, his hoodie was currently balled up under Thor’s head as a makeshift pillow. Peter had a strong desire to pull out his phone and take another picture. He texted May instead.

_okay if i spend the night?!!?!_

_no superheroing?_

_no superheroing. just bed._

_then yes, you cn spend th enight_

“Do you think he does this on purpose?” Clint asked. Peter looked up from his phone to see Clint frowning at his jacket. It was lying on the counter, the sleeve trapped beneath Mjolnir, and wasn’t that just freaking awesome.

“Thor,” Tony yelled, grabbing a forgotten piece of pizza crust and tossing it towards the couch. “Come get your shit.”

Thor’s only response was to quietly lift his left hand and extend his middle finger into the air.

“Definitely does it on purpose,” Clint muttered. He reached out and poked the hammer’s handle.

“You wanna give it a go?”

Peter turned to Tony. “What?”

Tony nodded to the hammer, one corner of his mouth lifting in a playful smile. “Do you want to see if you can lift it? Find out if you’re ‘worthy’ or whatever?”

Peter looked to the hammer and back to Tony. “Can I? I mean—“ he looked to the couch and the still dozing Thor—“Is that allowed?”

“Go for it,” Thor mumbled, raising his head sleepily.

Peter had a replica of Mjolnir at home. It was smaller than the real thing. And plastic. It weighed nothing and looked like it belonged on the toy aisle of the local pharmacy.

The real thing though…

Peter could feel the power, the magic, the—whatever it was radiating from the hammer as he approached it. He felt the hairs on his arms stand on end as he reached out, felt a tingle run down his spine as he grabbed the handle, the power positively thrumming as the spider inside reacted in excitement.

“You’ve gotta put your back into it,” Tony warned. “Two hands.”

Thor gave him an encouraging smile.

Peter pulled. His knuckles turned white, his shoulders strained, but it didn’t move. He let the handle go, popped his neck, and shook out his arms.

The others were all smiling now, and when Peter stuck both feet to the side of the cabinet for leverage and pulled again, Clint actually laughed.

The laughter stopped the moment Mjolnir moved.

It wasn’t a lot. Peter didn’t lift it, but it definitely budged.

Peter looked up to meet Tony’s wide eyes. “Do it again,” Tony encouraged, tone no longer playful as he stared at the hammer, surprised eyes slowly narrowing in concentration, like Mjolnir was something to study.

Thor was standing now, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched Peter expectantly.

Peter tightened his grip, flexed his toes against the cabinet doors, and pulled.

Nothing happened.

“It moved before,” Peter whispered, letting go and dropping back down to the ground. He rubbed at his strained shoulder and looked to Thor.

Thor was frowning. He didn’t necessarily look unhappy, just…contemplative.

“You know, Parker,” he said, walking forward and lifting Mjolnir off the counter, “Only one other person has been able to do what you just did.”

“Fail?” Peter asked, and yeah, he sounded a little petulant, “Pretty sure that number’s a little higher than one.”

“Cap made it move,” Tony said. He still had that studious glare happening, only now it was directed at Peter, not the hammer. “Couldn’t lift it, but he made it move.”

“No one else even made it wiggle,” Clint added, snatching his jacket off the counter. “You definitely got a wiggle.”

Thor clasped Peter’s shoulder and gave a friendly (bruising), encouraging squeeze. He smiled, winked, and gave what Peter assumed was an approving nod.

Peter went to bed feeling numb. It was like his emotions were split down the middle. On one hand, he’d just spent half the day lounging around with the Avengers, made friends with an actual god, and made Mjolnir move, budge…wiggle.

On the other hand, he wasn’t worthy.

But then again, neither was anyone else.

It was a mix of euphoria and near tangible disappointment. He felt numb, the good and the bad cancelling each other out.

Neutral.                             

* * *

 

Peter slept. He ate when he was hungry, went to school, patrolled. Wash, rinse, repeat.

It felt monotonous. Repetitive. Routine.

Days turned to weeks, and Peter was starting to think something was wrong with him. He used to spend his days in tense anticipation, counting down until the next adventure, heart thrumming with excitement.

Now he just went through the motions.

Happy called on occasion, prompting Peter, reminding him he was supposed to check in. Tony would send a text every now and then, a quick “are you still alive?” kind of thing. Peter always answered.

Some days Peter didn’t feel like going on patrol. Those days May would look at him, brow pinched, like she was torn between being glad he was home but worried because _why_?

Some days he just wouldn’t come home at all. He’d stay out all night, jumping from roof top to roof top. Once, when the numbness returned, Peter climbed as high as he could and jumped, waiting until the last minute to fire a web, hoping it’d elicit a feeling, an emotion, something.

It did. But it scared him more than anything.

He felt like a coin being flipped. He had no idea how he would feel from one moment to the next; heads you’re happy, tails you’re not.

Words like hormones, adolescence, and depression popped into his head on occasion. Peter ignored them.

If people noticed Peter wasn’t his usual self, they didn’t say anything, or at least nothing that couldn’t be dissuaded with a smile and a convincing “I’m fine.”

“Are you okay?”

“Have you been sleeping well?”

“Is everything okay at school?”

“Are patrols getting to be too much?”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’m fine,” he’d tell them, and he was. There wasn’t necessarily anything _bad_ happening. Peter sometimes came home with scrapes and bruises, the occasional dislocated shoulder or fractured wrist…but that was par for the course.

Compared to the past, things were looking pretty good.

Until they weren’t.

Anyone over the age of ten knew what a rift looked like. It was dark and threatening and full on reflected the end of the world.

It’d be cool if it didn’t hint at certain death.

May had begged him not to go.

Peter vaguely remembered a time when he might have listened to her.

Now, he just put on his suit, kissed her forehead and promised not to die.

“Nice of you to join us.” Tony smiled as Peter landed next to him. “You up for this?”

Peter had his head tilted back, his neck straining as he took in the dark spot hovering over the Wyndham Hotel. So far, he couldn’t see anything coming through it.

“What are we looking at?” he asked.

“Hopefully a misunderstanding,” Clint said, his voice filtering through comms as Karen linked in with the others. “I’ve got my fingers crossed a big ugly will come out, say whoops, wrong address, and then leave.”

The big ugly wasn’t really big, not really. He was bigger than a bread box, but smaller than the Hulk, so all in all, not the most troubling thing.

No, the trouble came from his minions, because everyone knew you couldn’t be the villain without a minion or two.

Or thousand.

Except these minions looked almost human, until Peter got up close and personal with one and realized they _were_ human. Their eyes were wide, pupils blown, and each reminded Peter of that video of a rabid dog that’d been passed around YouTube; teeth barred, breath hitching, movements jerky as their veins bulged black.

“Are they possessed?” Peter asked, webs shooting left and right, pinning the minions up, down, to the side of a car, around a street light.

“Mind control?” Clint suggested, and dude he was almost out of arrows.

“Infected,” Thor corrected. His tone made it clear it wasn’t a guess. “I have seen this before.”

“How do we fight it?” Steve asked.

“By fighting them.”

And that is not what Peter wanted to hear. He’d been hoping for a cure or something, an off switch, not death.

He had no idea where they’d come from, but it was clear they weren’t from New York. Their clothes were fitted for battle, their arms dark with markings and scars, and their weapons were definitely…foreign.

There were the standard blasters, lasers, guns that looked like they’d been pulled from a Tarantino film, and something that strangely resembled a light saber. Peter might have been excited by that were a guy not trying to full on Obi Wan him with the glowy end.

But those were easy to deal with. Peter had seen them before, even if not in person. No, what was new were the globs of black tar-like goo that one guy was shooting from an honest to god canon.

Peter was staying low, trying to stick close to Nat and Clint as they fought their way through the horde of infected, zombified killers. He saw the canon rise, saw where it was aiming, and darted forward, arm circling around Natasha’s waist just in time to pull her out of the way of a gelatinous glob of slick goo.

Nat was barely phased. She made a small _hmmph_ sound when Peter first picked her up, but she was already firing her guns again before they landed.

“What is that stuff?” Peter asked, watching as the goo morphed, growing, spreading slowly up the side of an SUV. It looked like it had a mind of its own.

“Not our biggest problem right now,” was Natasha’s answer. And yeah, the guys shooting at them, destroying 8th Avenue were definitely the bigger problem. Peter should probably focus on them.

Except that canon had good aim.

It hit him while he was in the air. That weird tickle he sometimes got when danger was near had been a near constant since the first shot had been fired, so when it flared, Peter wasn’t really sure what it was warning of.

He figured it out when the goo smacked him in the face.

His webbing snapped and he fell hard, landing on the debris strewn street with a loud and painful crack that knocked the air out of him. The goo was stretched from his chin to his nose. And. It. Was. Moving.

He took a deep breath, ignored Karen asking if he was all right, and reached up, fingers sinking into the mass of goo. It was like it was touching him back, wrapping itself around his fingers as it spread. Peter hastily pulled his hand away, but when he tried to sit up, he couldn’t.

The goo had spread past his ear, anchoring itself to the ground as it slowly sludged its way upwards, creeping towards his eyes.

“Karen,” Peter gasped as his fingers fumbled for the edge of his mask, only the goo had already reached his neck, blocking the edge. Peter’s panic began to grow the moment he felt a slick coldness start to seep through his mask and onto his skin. “Karen!”

“I have called for help, Peter” Karen said calmly, her tone soothing and reassuring. “Mr. Stark is aware of your situation.”

That was good, because Peter wasn’t really sure what his situation was. He knew he was trapped, his head cemented to the ground by a moldy alien flubber, the rest of his body spastically trying to get away.

Peter could taste it now, could feel the goo pushing into his mouth, sliding against his tongue. It reminded Peter of orthodontist visits and mouth molds and it made him want to gag.

Karen must have sensed it because she kindly pointed out that vomiting would not be ideal at the current moment. “Breathe through your nose, Peter.”

Which would be totally great advice if the goo wasn’t currently blocking Peter’s nostrils. “K’rn,” Peter choked out, his tongue barely able to move now. The goo was pushing forward, sliding below his lip, _feeling_ its way along his gum line and teeth.

The word “violated” popped into Peter’s mind, this one he couldn’t ignore.

He closed his eyes when he felt the goo pushing against his cheekbone, sliding over his left eye and blocking half his sight.

He was going to die. It was in his mouth, in his nose, it was blinding him. He couldn’t call for help, he couldn’t _breathe_. He could barely hear Karen’s voice, the sound of his heart pounding, the steady _whooshwhooshwhoosh_ blocking her out.

But then the goo shifted again, tightened, and now it was pulling at his mask, turning his head, holding his wrists and pushing them away.

Peter tried to fight.

“Damn it, kid! Hey look at me, look at me, Peter,” Tony was yelling, his voice hard, his grip harder. “You gotta quit moving, okay. I’ve got to—just stay still.”

Peter opened his right eye. Everything was fuzzy, dark, but he could see the Iron Man mask above him. Tony was trying to get Peter’s mask off, trying to pull the goo away, only he seemed to be having as much luck as Peter had.

Peter still couldn’t breathe.

He reached up, goo smeared fingers frantically sliding against the Iron Man armor, grasping at Tony’s arms.

His movements weren’t coordinated, they were weak, panicked, and Tony could tell.

“FRIDAY?” he barked, and a part of Peter’s brain, the part not currently freaking out because he was about to suffocate to death, realized FRIDAY was probably tracking his vitals.

He guessed they weren’t good because Tony suddenly started screaming. “I need help here! Somebody, I need--“ he lowered his voice, his tone still panicked but sounding more like he was thinking out loud, “--I need to get this off. How do I get this off?”

Peter blinked and suddenly Thor was leaning over him, his face angry as he spoke. Peter couldn’t hear him.

 _Whooshwhooshwhooshwhoosh_.

And then Tony lifted his hand, and for one panicked moment Peter thought he was about to be shot in the face.

Instead, a high pitched, bone scraping, death rattling shriek tore through the air and Peter was no longer worried about suffocating—his head was going to explode before that happened.

He tried to scream, but with no air all that came out was a muffled and pained gagging sound.

Peter wasn’t even sure if he was still awake. Was he dead now? Is that what happened? He couldn’t see anything.

But he could still feel.

The goo was no longer moving. It had stiffened at the sound of the high pitched noise and now it seemed…unconscious? Dead?

Peter opened his one eye and saw Thor’s determined face sneer as he grabbed at Peter’s mask, uncaring of the goo clinging to his hands. There was a tug, a pull on Peter’s hair and then…

Blessedly cool air hit Peter’s skin as Thor _tore_ the mask from Peter, ripping the fabric from right temple to nose.

Peter blinked a few times, his one clear eye sluggishly going from Thor to Tony to Thor to Tony.

“We got you, kid. You’re okay,” Tony assured him, face plate lifting as he stuck his glove free fingers beneath the edge of the torn mask and pulled, taking the goo and a few strands of Peter’s hair with it.

Peter was limp.

He didn’t even try to help as Tony pulled the rest of the mask free, letting it drop to the ground with a heavy, _glump,_ wet sound.

Thor pulled Peter into a sitting position and placed his hand at the back of Peter’s neck, holding his head as Tony grabbed Peter’s chin and stuck his fingers in Peter’s mouth.

“Spit it out, Peter,” Tony ordered, nails scraping against Peter’s tongue as he pulled chunks of limp goo from Peter’s mouth. “Come on, kid.”

Thor reached forward and pressed his knuckle into Peter’s chest. “Breathe, Parker.”

And Peter did.

He took in a shaky, relieved gasp. And then another.

And then felt pieces of goo sticking to his throat. He coughed, gasped again, and then threw up--right in Thor’s lap, bits of black goo and undigested Lucky Charms splattering on Iron Man’s leg.

“You’re fine, you’re fine,” Tony encouraged, one hand patting him on the back while the other pushed against his chest, holding him up.

Peter took in another shaky breath and looked up.

Thor was gone. Peter was vaguely aware of a _whum_ sound echoing amongst the crashes and bangs and yells, hinting that Mjolnir was on the loose.

“Tony? You good?”

Peter looked to his right to see Captain America standing a few feet away, acting as a shield between Peter, Tony, and the murderous minions.

“Yeah, we’re good,” Tony said, and without warning he grabbed Peter beneath his arms and carried him away.

Peter closed his eyes and went with it.

Not that he had any other choice.

He didn’t open his eyes again until he was being sat back down.

They were in an alley, still right in the thick of things. Peter was surprised.

“Look at me.” Tony was kneeling in front of Peter, his helmet off, his mouth pressed in a grim line.

“I’m fine,” Peter told him. It was a reflex now.

“You weren’t breathing,” Tony informed him, and yeah, he kind of knew that already. “Your lips were fucking blue.”

Okay, he didn’t know that.

“I’m breathing now,” Peter pointed out, and he took another deep breath just to emphasize the point. But also because it felt good. Like really good. He did it again.

“My mask—“

“I’ll get you another mask,” Tony cut him off. He reached out with both hands and grabbed Peter’s face, fingers cradling his head as Tony studied him, looking at his eyes, looking at his mouth. “Are you okay? You’re good?”

“I’m good.”

“For real good? Or are we talking that bullshit _I’m fine_ good you’ve been spoon feeding everyone the last few months?”

Peter took in another deep breath. “The first one.”

Tony stared at him a second, nodded, looked to the opening of the alley when the Hulk’s roar followed the sound of a loud crash, and then looked back to Peter.

“You stay here,” he said, grabbing his helmet and standing. “FRIDAY is monitoring your suit. Unless someone is trying to kill you, you do not leave this alley.”

Peter just took another deep breath and let his head lean back against the building. Tony was gone before Peter could think to argue.

His legs were stretched out before him, his arms laying limp at his sides. Without his mask and Karen he had no idea what was going on.

He took a few more deep breaths, waited until his hands stopped shaking and leaned forward around the dumpster and cardboard boxes blocking him from the alley’s entrance.

All he could see was a destroyed taxi and pile of rubble.

But he could hear everything.

People were still screaming, though now it was far away. There was gunfire, the occasional explosion, a symphony of sirens, and the frequent _whhuuum_ of Mjolnir flying from and to Thor’s hand. He could hear Tony’s blasters, Captain America calling orders.

He could hear a baby crying.

Peter was moving before he was aware of making the decision. It started as a crawl until he had the presence of mind to stand, his hands sticking to the wall as he pulled himself up.

He was fully aware he wasn’t wearing his mask. He could still feel bits of the goo clinging to his skin, matting in his hair. He ran his tongue along his lips and grimaced when he felt pieces stuck in the cracks of his chapped skin.

There wasn’t anyone left on the street to see his face. At least none that were alive, not where he was.

He could still hear the crying.

She was stuck in a car seat, the front of the car caved in enough from a chunk of fallen building that Peter knew better than to look in the front seat. She looked to be about two years old, maybe three. Her hair was parted down the middle, pulled up into two bushy buns. Her face was a mess of tears and snot, her cheeks darkened by all the crying, chubby fingers pulling at the harness holding her in her seat as she stuttered and hiccupped and screamed for her mommamommamomma.

“Hey, sweetie,” Peter greeted, which just caused her to scream more, “I’m gonna get you out. You’re okay.”

The door wouldn’t open, so Peter had to climb through the broken sunroof. She might have been terrified of him, but the moment he had her free, she was clinging to him for dear life.

Peter heard the now familiar _whum_ and turned in time to see Mjolnir land to his left, the sidewalk cratering beneath the force. When it didn’t move, Peter looked up. Thor was on the edge of the roof, his arm swinging as he wielded one of the minion’s light saber knockoffs.

It was kinda cool.

Definitely cool.

Any other time, Peter would have gladly stayed to watch, except he currently had a terrified toddler burying her face in his shoulder and wiping her snot on his neck. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he repeated, his voice automatically getting softer, lighter as he wrapped his arms around her. “We’re just gonna go hide for a little bit, okay? Iron Man found us a nice, safe alley. It’s oka—“

Something grabbed his ankle and pulled.

It was more instinct than quick thinking as Peter pivoted, cradling the little girl’s head, shifting enough to land on his back. He looked towards his ankle, fearing another glob of goo was trying to take him over.

It wasn’t goo, but it wasn’t much better either.

It was one of the bad guys, his teeth snarling as he reeled Peter in, pulling on the rope wrapped around Peter’s ankle.

“Oh shit, oh shit.”

He still didn’t have his mask, didn’t have a way to call for help, to let people know he had a _freaking baby_ in the middle of a warzone.

So he let instinct take over.

One arm tightened around the screaming kid, the other reached out, shooting a web onto the side of a large, dented SUV.

The minion kept pulling.

Peter was being stretched, his body off the ground. His shoulder was grinding, threatening to pop out of its socket as the rope tightened around is ankle, cutting off the blood supply.

The little girl was still screaming.

And the SUV was creaking.

Peter felt the give. At first, he thought his shoulder had finally popped, but then his eyes caught up with reality and he saw the door from the SUV shift once, twice, before being _ripped_ from its hinges.

The minion continued to reel them in.

“Oh shit, oh shit, ohshitohshitohshit.”

Peter fired another web at what looked like a piece of roof that had crumbled. It held for a moment, and then began to slide along the sidewalk. Peter released the web and looked around frantic.

Then he saw Mjolnir.

The minion was only a few yards away now. Peter’s ankle felt broken, his back bruised, his head throbbing. The little girl was now screaming for her daddy.

He sent out another web. It landed on the hammer’s handle, and Peter smiled.

The smile fell the moment Mjolnir moved.

 _Whum_.

It flew straight into Peter’s hand, webbing tangled between his fingers and the handle.

The minion had reeled them in, it was clawing at Peter’s leg, growling as it dug its fingers in, leaving bruises and scrapes. It grabbed the little girl’s leg and her panicked screams turned to shrieks. It was going to kill them.

So Peter swung his arm.

Mjolnir connected with the minion’s head just above its right ear. He felt the bones give, heard the crack as its skull caved in. He saw the moment the snarling expression of rage fell, slackening as its eyes closed.

The minion crumbled, body falling heavy on Peter’s legs. Peter hurriedly pushed it off and climbed to his feet, panting as he stared down in horrified shock.

It didn’t look like a murderous minion anymore. It just looked like a dead man.

There was blood and bits of hair on Mjolnir.

Peter didn’t know how he felt, but he was feeling something.

He wished the numbness would return.

It didn’t.

But Tony did.

He landed hard in the street, faceplate lifting, eyes wide as he stared at Peter, and yeah, Peter knew he must be a sight. Face sweaty and smeared with bits of blood and drying black goo, a screaming kid perched on his hip and the bloody hammer of a god hanging at his side.

Peter watched as Tony took in everything, eyes going from the little girl to the dead minion before settling on Mjolnir.

Peter thought Tony would say something about leaving the alley, about not doing what he was told.

He didn’t.

All he said was a quiet, “I’ll be damned.”

* * *

 

Peter was sitting on the couch, left foot propped on the coffee table, his eyes staring unfocusedly at the icepack resting on his swollen ankle.

He’d brushed his teeth, showered, and let Tony and Bruce tend to his injuries. Now he was wearing borrowed clothes and waiting for his aunt to arrive.

They were all sort of moving on autopilot now, everyone looking like they’d caught whatever funk had been plaguing Peter for the last few months. It was quiet, still, eerie, and nowhere near the after battle adrenaline-fueled comradery Peter had expected.

He was grateful, he didn’t really feel up to any more excitement.

He pulled his hands into the sleeves of Tony’s oversized sweatshirt and wrapped his fingers around the cuffs. He could feel little drops of water dribble down his neck from his freshly washed hair to soaking up the collar.

He sniffed, winced at how loud it was, and kept not-staring at the icepack.

Tony had asked him if he was okay, gave him a look that said “I don’t believe you” when Peter said he was, and steered him towards the couch with an order not to move until his ankle healed.

He was currently hovering on the other side of the room, a phone stuck to his ear as he negotiated clean up from the attack. He and Peter both pretended Tony wasn’t keeping Peter within his line of sight, eyes worriedly looking over towards the couch every few minutes.

Peter sniffed again.

His eyes finally left the icepack when Thor set Mjolnir down on the coffee table inches away from Peter’s foot.

Peter looked at the hammer, noticed it’d been cleaned, and glanced up at Thor. He was staring down at Peter, arms crossed over his chest, head tilted to the side, eyes narrowed in consideration.

“You’ve been deemed worthy,” he said. His voice was deep, rolling, and quiet, more of a rumble. Like thunder.

“Does that mean I get to keep your hammer?” Peter asked, surprised to feel the corner of his mouth quirk up in a half-grin.

Thor smiled, eyes crinkling. He shook his head, sighed, and sat down next to Peter. “I’m not sure what it means,” he admitted, “I’m still learning, I think. My definition of ‘worthy’ seems to change constantly.”

“Pretty sure I was the last person you expected to lift it.”

“When I first saw you, yes. But I think that had more to do with the fact that you’re so tiny,” Thor said, and okay, rude. “But then I heard the others talk about you, listened to what Stark had to say, and now...” he sighed again, “Now, I think I was wrong to be surprised.”

Peter looked over to Tony. His back was to them, facing the wall as he talked angrily to whoever was on the other end of the phone.

“I’m not really sure what he told you—“ Peter began, only to stop. Part of him wanted to ask what Tony had said, what he thought about him. But part of him was afraid to. What if it was bad? What if it was good, so good that there was no way Peter could ever live up to it?

_I was just trying to be like you._

_I want you to be better._

“I think Stark has great expectations for you. He seems to think you’ll be the best of us all,” Thor said, and Peter felt his stomach twist. “I say being deemed worthy by Mjolnir might have proved him right.”

Peter let his eyes drift from watching Tony only to find Thor staring at him with a soft smile.

“You said your definition of worthy changes,” said Peter, and Thor nodded. “How would you define it now?”

Thor sighed again, tilted his head back and studied the ceiling while he thought it through. “I think you have to be a hero,” he began. “Strong, determined. Willing to make sacrifices, to make the hard decisions. You have to realize it’s not all about you anymore, not about what you want but what you need to do. You have to be willing to admit when you’re wrong, acknowledge your weaknesses.”

Peter felt small, that numbness he once hated nowhere in sight. “I want to be a hero, but—“”

“You are.” Thor’s voice was stern, adamant.

“I killed a man today.”

“So did we,” Thor argued. His smile was gone. He shifted, turning so he could face Peter. “Maybe you should redefine what you see as a hero. Every one of us has taken a life. Some more than others, but I see it in your eyes, Parker, the way you look at them, at Stark, Banner, and the others. They’re your heroes.”

“Yeah.” They always have been.

“You saved a child today. You made the decision to save her life over that of someone’s who was already lost.” Thor grabbed Peter’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’m pretty sure that’s why Mjolnir deemed you worthy.”

Peter looked at the hammer sitting on the table, he tapped it with his foot. He didn’t really see why being willing to take a life would make him worthy, but he wasn’t about to question a god. Or his hammer.

“I don’t want to kill again.”

“I hope you never have to, Peter Parker, but I think you should be prepared that you might.”

“Will it get easier?”

“It shouldn’t.”

Aunt May arrived then, her eyes rimmed in red, her hair a mess, and he didn’t realize how much he really needed one of her hugs until she crossed the room, pushed Thor Odinson God of Thunder out of the way and wrapped Peter in her arms.

“You are never leaving the apartment again.”

“I’m okay, May.”

“I’ll get a leash. People use them on kids now. I’ve seen them do it.”

“Barely a scratch on me, I swear.”

“They even come with little backpack things, like a dog or monkey or something. I’m getting you one of those.”

“I love you, May.”

“I love you, too, but I’m serious.”

* * *

 

Peter was still stuck in a routine, still living from day to day, still flipping the coin, unsure where it would land. Only these days it felt like it was landing on heads more often than not. Tony texted him regularly, called on occasion, so did Happy, and Thor surprisingly (once Tony set him up with a phone and Peter showed him how to use it.)

He went on patrol, made sure to give Happy his report.

“Short and simple, kid. I don’t need a play by play, just give me the Cliff Notes version and let me know you’re not bleeding to death.”

He made time for May, made sure he was home on time to make curfew. Mostly.

“Stark said he could make a leash with a little spider backpack.”

“I was three minutes late.”

“He said he’d even make it red and blue.”

He went to decathlon practice, did his homework, stopped bank robberies, and played video games. Some nights Ned would spend the night and they’d scarf down take out and build Legos. Other nights they’d google how to treat a burn and beg Tony not to tell May when he’d call demanding to know how bad.

“Seriously, kid. FRIDAY’s programmed to tell me when you’re being stupid.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Then why are you googling it?”

“…”

“Exactly. Send me a pic and I’ll decide if we need to call May.”

All in all, things were getting better. He was getting better.

Growing up might not mean you make less mistakes and being a hero didn’t necessarily mean he was going to get to save everyone.

But he was learning.

Learning to appreciate the little things that made him happy, like May’s obsession with Pinterest recipes, Ned’s steadily improving ability to talk to the Avengers without drooling, or Tony’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge that he might actually be getting old.

“Every single gray hair on my head is because of you, Parker.”

Then of course, there was the look on Flash’s face when Ned oh so casually showed him a picture of Peter holding Mjolnir above his head, Thor and Tony Stark laughing in the background.

“Holy shit.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit more angsty than the previous chapters. I blame Infinity War and the ever present feeling of "ugh" it's left me in. I still don't want to talk about it.


	5. It's called science, Peter. Look it up.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone wants to know how Peter's new Spidey-sense works.
> 
> Peter just wants everyone to stop poking him with pointy things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one isn't as "structured" as the others. It's not so much a story as it is literary vomit of a headcanon.

“Alright, explain it to me again.”

Peter sighed, fumbled with the screwdriver and web canister he was working with, and tried to find the right words. “It’s like a tickle, a…tingle, at the back of my neck.”

Tony had his arm elbow deep in what was left of the old Mark-46 suit. He pulled out a set of melted wires, tossed them over his shoulder with a scowl, and then asked, “And you only feel it if you’re in trouble?”

“Yes—,” Peter nodded, thought about it, then frowned. “Maybe, I don’t know, but I think so. It’s like a warning or something.”

“Is it accurate?”

“I don’t know, it’s still new,” Peter said with a shrug, reaching for his web shooter and trying to make the canister fit inside. He had exactly no idea what it was, let alone if it was accurate. “I just, I just know that every time I’ve felt it, something bad was about to happen.”

“How bad? Scale it for me.”

“I don’t know…”

Tony looked up from the suit and grabbed a grease stained towel to wipe his hands on. “On a scale of May-Parker-looking-under-my-mattress to there’s-a-gun-to-my-head, what’s the least dangerous thing that’s made you tickle?”

Peter tilted his head with a frown. “What’s under your mattress?”

“I was talking about _your_ mattress,” Tony corrected, “and don’t segue, answer the question.”

“Uh…” Peter closed his eyes and tried to think, remembered the feeling of gravity kicking his ass and said, “I felt it just before my web canister failed while on patrol.”

“It failed?” Tony dropped the towel and grabbed the web shooter out of Peter’s hand. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It was empty.”

Tony’s eyebrows met in the middle in a familiarly disapproving scowl. “That’s not a product malfunction, that’s a user malfunction. I know your AI tells you when it’s almost empty.”

“…she does.”

“Karen, right? That’s what you named her?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t ignore Karen. She’s smarter than you. That it?” he tossed the web shooter back to Peter and started digging through a toolbox. “That the least dangerous, though incredibly stupid and preventable thing that set it off, this…whatever it is?”

“I felt it right before Flash tripped me in the hall.”

Tony stopped digging and looked over his shoulder. “Flash? Is that the asshole?”

Peter nodded and went back to working on his web shooter. “Flash is the asshole.”

“Hmmm.”

There were more sounds of rummaging, clinks and clanks echoed through the lab as Tony clattered from one desk to the other. Peter didn’t bother asking what the “hmmm” had meant, he was slowly starting to learn what Tony’s “thinking” sounded like, and if it was like anything in the past, it was best not to interrupt it.

Or so Peter thought.

But he’d been wrong before.

The clanking stopped, the soles of Tony’s shoes squeaked as he pivoted around, and something sharp and very painful _jabbed_ itself in Peter’s back.

“Ouch!” He yelped. He turned around to find Tony staring at him, a micro diamond drill bit held in his hand. _What the hell?_

“Did it tickle then?” he asked, not looking the least bit guilty.

“No!”

Tony’s frown went from quizzical to insulted. He looked down at the tool in his hand, tapped his finger on the tip and winced before sticking it in his mouth. “Wonder why Flash the Ass gets a tickle but not me?”

“Maybe because I trust you more than Flash?” Peter snapped, wincing as he tried to reach around and rub at the sore spot along his spine. “Geez, Mr. Stark. That hurt.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “You’ve been stabbed before.”

“Twice now, thanks.”

“With an actual knife, _this_ hardly counts,” Tony tossed the bit onto the worktable. “Don’t be melodramatic. I’ve been informed people don’t like it.” He clapped his hands, made a few snaps with his fingers and then leaned back against his desk, arms crossing over his chest as he stared at Peter, studied him. “So, we’ve established a hypothesis. It has to be a reasonable threat, with actual harm intended. You ever get the tinglies during training?”

“No.”

“Not even when Nat did that whole little death crunch on your neck with her thighs?”

“No.”

“Pretty sure a teenage boy should get _some_ kind of tingles when that happens?”

Peter smirked and tilted his head. “Does she make you tingle?”

Tony’s eyes narrowed. “I liked you better when you were all stuttery and blushing. This smart-ass Parker isn’t as much fun.”

As if it were waiting for its cue, Peter felt his face heat up, the tips of his ears burn as they reddened. He ducked his head and focused back on his web shooter. “Sorry.”

He heard Tony sigh, saw him move out the corner of his eye. “Never mind, kid,” he said, squeezing Peter’s shoulder as he walked by, “go back to being a smart-ass.”

Peter pressed his lips together to keep from smiling. They were slowly getting over the awkward stages of this whole mentor/mentee thing. Peter was learning not to gawk and spaz out, to see Tony as an actual person, as someone more than Iron Man.

And Tony was oh so slowly learning to see Peter as something more than a freaky kid with a tendency to get in trouble. He wasn’t exactly treating Peter as an equal, not yet…but they were getting there. There was definitely respect being shown.

But then again…

“Ouch! What the hell?”

Tony held up a pair of needle nose pliers. “Still nothing?”

* * *

 

 

Here’s the thing: when you have a hypothesis, you have to test it. Everyone knew that, whether they were a scientist or not.

And Tony Stark was a scientist.

“Did Mr. Stark put you up to this?” Peter asked. He was stuck on the ceiling, his t-shirt sliding down to pool under his arms as he looked down at Natasha Romanov (who had the decency to look as though teenage boys always hung out upside down, suspended from the ceiling by their fingers and toes. No big deal).

“He might have mentioned it in passing,” she said as she adjusted the wrappings around her hand. “I thought it was interesting,” she added, giving a little shrug as she looked up, “wanted to test it out myself.”

“I’ve never felt it act up when we’ve sparred,” he pointed out. And they’d sparred numerous times. Something about him being woefully unprepared, eventually getting his ass kicked, yada yada. He was starting to regret agreeing to the whole Mama Spider tutelage thing the Captain had sat up.

“Yeah, but I’ve never intentionally tried to actually hurt you before,” she said, and boy could her smile turn scary quick.

“You’re not really making me want to come down.”

“Get down here, bug, or I swear, I will find a way to come up there.”

Peter dropped down.

She kicked his ass.

Repeatedly.

* * *

 

Tony didn’t really seem interested in whether or not the Black Widow had given his protégé a possible broken nose or a definite black eye. His only concern was whether or not Peter had felt a warning tingle.

“Nothing? You didn’t feel anything at all?”

“Just pain and a newfound sense of embarrassment.” Peter adjusted the icepack on his nose and tried to take comfort in the fact that Nat was currently nursing a few bruises of her own.

Tony moved the icepack and winced sympathetically. “She didn’t hurt you too bad, did she?”

Peter wrinkled his nose, regretted it, and shrugged. “Just my pride,” he said, “I think that’s permanently wounded.”

“It shouldn’t be. She’s the definition of lethal. But seriously, no tingle?”

“No tingle.”

“Hmmm.” Tony hummed. He was thinking again.

“Don’t do that.” 

* * *

 

Peter healed fast, but not fast enough. May stared at the swollen nose and greenish bruise from her end of the sofa and took a sip of her coffee.

“Did you at least _try_ and defend yourself?”

“Hey, I’m not the only one with a black eye,” Peter pointed out. “I’ve actually gotten better at the whole fighting thing.”

“Hmmm,” May hummed and took another sip. May’s thinking was different than Tony’s. Tony’s brain didn’t really work like everyone else’s. His thoughts and ideas weren’t predictable, at least not to Peter.

May’s however…

Peter knew May, like, really _knew_ her, better than he knew anyone else. He knew that when that little V formed between her eyebrows, her eyes crinkling, lips parting in a confused sneer, she was thinking something along the lines of “what the fuck?”

When her left eyebrow arched higher than the right, her mouth puckering to the side, Peter knew he was in trouble.

He knew her surprised face, her happy face.

He knew what she looked like when she thought her world was ending.

He wasn’t entirely sure what she was about to say, but based on the look she was giving him and the way her smile cocked to the side, whatever it was, was going to be sarcastic as fuck.

“I’m trying to figure out how fucked up my life is that I’m not the least bit concerned that my sixteen-year-old just got in a fist fight with a former Russian assassin. And lost.”

Boom. Told ya.

“It was a tie.”

“Was it really?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, sweetie.”

“I liked it better when you were all panicky and concerned.”

“No you didn’t.” Smile and another sip. “So, did this little S&M session at least get results? Other than temporary disfigurement?”

“I don’t know,” Peter sighed, slumping down until his head hit the armrest, his toes tucking themselves between his aunt’s thigh and the cushion. “I never felt a warning, so I don’t know how that affects Mr. Stark’s hypothesis, because Nat definitely intended to cause harm.”

“Hmmm.”

Peter lifted his head so he could see his aunt. “You’re not about to stab me are you?”

She frowned. “What?”

“Nothing,” Peter said, letting his head fall back. “What’re you thinking?”

“That maybe this whole little psychic mojo can’t be tricked. I mean, I really like to think that Natasha wouldn’t have _really_ caused you harm.”

Peter pointed at his still swollen nose.

“You know what I mean,” May continued in an unbothered tone, and yeah, their lives were way fucked because Peter could remember a time when she would flip over the smallest bruise and go into full-on mama bear mode.

“What I’m saying,” she continued, “is if this little sixth sense, this spider psychic warning system you’ve got going on can really sense danger, maybe it has to be real, actual danger. Not a test. I mean, if the… _spider_ bit of you knows you’re safe, that it was just training, that you were _willingly_ setting yourself up to get your ass kicked, maybe it, I don’t know, maybe it didn’t see a point in warning you.”

It was Peter’s turn to “Hmmm.”

* * *

 

“Have I ever set it off?”

“Why would _you_ set it off, Ned?”

“I don’t know…what about MJ? She ever set it off.”

“No.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“But it’s weird though, isn’t it? That Flash could set it off but not the Black Widow?”

“May thinks it’s because Nat didn’t really intend to cause me harm, that my spider side knew I wasn’t in real danger or something.”

“Dude, I saw the bruises.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Ned. I can’t control it.”

“…you sure MJ’s never set it off?”

“Man, let it go.”

* * *

 

Peter had Karen keep a list of every time his powers warned him about potential danger. It varied, everything from potential bullies to stray bullets made the list.

Tony was not on that list.

Not for lack of trying.

“He keeps poking me with pointy things.”

Bruce laughed, but kept his eyes on the microscope. “Yeah, he does that.”

Peter rolled his eyes and spun around on the stool. “It’s been over a month and we still can’t figure out exactly what causes it to tingle. I mean, except for danger, but it seems to be picky on what it wants to warn me about.”

“We still talking about your Spidey-sense?” Bruce asked, hand rising to slowly adjust the scope’s magnification.

Peter stopped spinning. “We’re not calling it that.”

Bruce looked up, his face confused. “That’s what Tony’s calling it.”

“Seriously?”

“I like it,” Bruce said with a shrug and went back to his slides. “Kinda catchy. People like alliteration.”

“Ugh,” Peter groaned. He kicked his feet and pushed himself towards the other lab table and his abandoned chemistry homework. “So, what’re your thoughts?” he asked after working through a few formulas. “About my…Spidey-sense?”

Bruce looked up from the microscope and frowned in contemplation. “I think there’s a lot about your physiology that we don’t understand,” he said, hand scratching absently at his head as he continued to think out loud. “I mean, we don’t even know what _kind_ of spider bit you…” he looked to Peter for confirmation.

“A big one,” Peter answered.

Bruce smiled and shook his head. “See? Different spiders have different abilities, different DNA, and that’s not even counting what Osborn’s men had done to your spider before it found you. You’re still basically human. Mostly. But…there’s no doubt it’s handy. I mean, the ability to sense danger? That’s a pretty neat trick for a hero to have.”

“Yeah,” Peter agreed. Really freaking handy. “Kinda wish I knew how to control it though.”

“I don’t see how you _could_ control it,” Bruce said, grabbing a pipette and sticking it into something that looked suspiciously like urine.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m assuming it’s just always _on_ , isn’t it?” Bruce asked, pipette dribbling little droplets of yuck onto a clean slide. “If it’s going to give you a warning anytime you’re in danger, then it has to always be looking for said danger. Don’t know how you’d control it, unless you’re wanting to turn it off. And why would you want to turn it off?”

“Huh,” Peter hadn’t really thought of it that way. Neither had Tony apparently, he always seemed stuck on the what and why, not the how. “Do spiders have a, uh, do they have a ‘Spidey-sense’?”

“I do know spiders are more sensitive to their surroundings,” Bruce said as he looked up from his slides, “They use scent and sounds, vibrations in their webs, things like that. But I’ve never heard of them having the ability of precognition, to _sense_ danger before it’s there.” Bruce sighed and gave a shrug. “But I’ve got a wizard’s number in my phone and I found out raccoons can talk, so hey, why can’t a spider mutated teen predict the future?”

Peter laughed and turned back to his homework. “Yeah, why not.”

There wasn’t a tingle, but Peter still knew it was coming.

He’d barely picked up his pencil when he felt a sharp pinch in the back of his arm.

Peter turned to find Bruce holding up something sharp, a sheepish smile on his face.

“Dude.”

“Sorry.”

“No you’re not.”

* * *

 

Happy didn’t really care about it either way. So the superhero has a new superpower, who cares? But that was just Happy; dismissive and unimpressed. Peter learned a long time ago not to take it personally.

Sort of.

There weren’t very many people still alive that Peter could say he absolutely trusted, like _really_ trusted with that blind faith kinda loyalty type of trust, but Happy Hogan was on that list (whether he wanted to be or not).

Peter trusted him. Plain and simple.

Yeah, their relationship was a little… _strained_ at times, but they were working on it. Peter was learning not to overshare and Happy was learning to listen.

It was a work in progress.

“Did you break the Queensboro Bridge?”

“Nope.”

“You saying you weren’t there?”

“No, I’m saying _I’m_ not the one who broke it.”

“What the hell happened, Parker?”

“It’s a long story….There was—“

“I’m gonna stop you there. First things first: are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Are you lying to me?”

“No.”

“…….”

“Are you asking FRIDAY?”

“I’m just double checking.”

“I’m not hurt.”

“Fine. Okay, now tell me what happened, but pretend it’s that tweet thing, keep it under a hundred characters.”

“You can use more than that now.”

“There went like half of them.”

Work in progress.

But there was definitely trust, at least on Peter’s side, which is why he never expected his Spider-sense, Spidey-sense, whatever, to go off while he was napping in the back of Happy’s car.

And it was definitely more than a tingle.

They were somewhere between Queens and Manhattan, the trip taking longer thanks to rush hour traffic, construction, and the Queensboro bridge being…temporarily unusable.

Peter’s head was resting against the window, the seatbelt pressing up against his throat as he dozed. He thought he was dreaming at first, that the buzz he felt vibrating through his skull was imagined.

But then that buzz felt more like a shock, what started as a light tingle grew, sharpening, demanding attention as it radiated from the base of Peter’s neck up to his temples.

WAKE UP it screamed, and Peter did. He opened his eyes to find Happy scowling at the slow moving cars before him, fingers tapping impatiently on the steering wheel.

“What---?” Peter looked around, winced as the buzzing in his head grew. There wasn’t anything around, nothing more than late afternoon traffic.

“You good kid?” Happy asked, scowl making its way to the rearview mirror. “You look like you’re--,”

“Pull over.” Peter wasn’t sure what was going on, but he knew something bad was coming.

“What?”

“Just pull over, Happy. Trust me.”

Happy threw his hands in the air, the scowl deepening. “Where am I supposed to pull over? The sidewalk? We’re in the middle of—,”

But Peter didn’t care, the Spidey-sense didn’t care. Neither did the pickup truck barreling down the alley.

Peter heard it first, his head turning towards the sound of a revving engine. The warning tingle buzzed in confirmation, like a pat on the head. _Good boy, you figured it out_.

Happy’s car was still inching forward, but not fast enough. It was right at the opening of the alley, and in the span of a few seconds, Peter gave in to his Spidey-sense and let instinct take over.

His seatbelt was off before the truck cleared the alley.

He was on his feet, arms reaching forward into the front seat before the sound of squealing tires and shifting gravel could be heard.

It wasn’t perfect timing, it wasn’t smooth and flawless, but it was good enough.

Peter grabbed the steering wheel and pulled at the same time he pushed down hard on Happy’s knee, forcing his foot onto the gas pedal.

The engine revved, the tires squealed, and the undercarriage made a painful scraping sound as Peter steered the car up onto the sidewalk.

They didn’t get completely out of the way, but the big ass truck was no longer aiming for Happy’s driver door.

Instead, it smashed into the back taillight, pushing the trunk of the car into the seat Peter had just abandoned.

It was dizzying, jarring, and painful.

Peter couldn’t do anything but go with the motion as the car slammed forward.

There was a _pop_ , a _hiss_ , and then a muffled _fuck_ as the car’s airbags deployed.

Peter could hear his heart whooshing in his ears, could feel it beating in his throat.

There were people screaming, horns blaring, engines whirring, and the delicate sound of glass tinkling down onto the asphalt.

There was a moment’s reprieve as everything came to a standstill.

Then the momentum ended, Peter’s body settled wherever it was going to settle, and Happy began to angrily push against the slowly deflating airbag.

Peter blinked. His head was squished between Happy’s knee and the steering column, the gearshift was pressing painfully into his right kidney, and his knee was twisted around the passenger seat’s headrest.

“Holy shit. Did we die?”

“I don’t think so?”

“We’re not dead?”

“Death doesn’t come with airbags, kid. You okay?”

“Ow.”

“I’m gonna need a little more than that?”

“I’m okay.”

“Yeah, we’re going to get a second opinion on that. No offense.”

And suddenly they were no longer alone. People were pulling on Happy’s door, FRIDAY’s voice was filtering up from the dashboard, and Peter could hear someone screaming about calling 911.

Peter ignored the hands pushing him down, the worried all-knowing-I-watch-Grey’s-Anatomy-so-I-know-best voices telling him not to move, that an ambulance was on the way. He pushed himself up and climbed out the passenger door.

The scene was a mess, but nowhere near as bad as it could have been.

People were gathered around the pickup truck, worried hands and panicked voices giving the same spiel they’d just tried with Peter to the truck’s driver.

Those that weren’t gathered around trying to get a closer look were standing out of the way, their phones out, flashes going crazy as they all took pictures of New York’s newest drama.

“Yeah, I heard you the first time, now move!”

Peter turned to find Happy climbing out of the driver’s seat, his arms angrily pushing away the would-be good Samaritans.

“I’m fine,” he assured them, adjusting his suit’s jacket before cautiously touching his bleeding nose. He winced, scowled angrily with a touch of concern at the truck buried in the Audi’s trunk, and looked over at Peter.

“How did you know? Was it—,” he made a weird gesture towards his head, “—that…that tingle thing?”

“Yeah.” Peter leaned against the roof of the car and sighed. “Started buzzing like crazy.”

“Oh.” Happy mirrored Peter and propped his arms on the roof. “Well, yay for that. This going on your list?”

“What list?”

“That list you got of everything that’s made your Sp—that’s tickled your fancy.”

“Oh yeah,” Peter said, smiling through a wince as he stretched his back. “Figure it’ll go somewhere between atomic wedgies and bullet holes.”

“You know Tony’s gonna be pissed he missed it, right?”

“More pissed than he is about his car?”

Happy smirked. “Tony’s got lots of cars. He’s yet to experience your new mojo in action.”

That was true, but as Peter listened to the sounds of approaching sirens and watched as Happy tenderly dabbed his tie against his bleeding nose, Peter thought it was probably a good thing not to be around when his “mojo” went off.

* * *

 

“Aliens, assassins, inter-dimensional gods, and actual wizards. You’ve seen some pretty crazy things, gone up against even crazier and yet you almost get taken out by a middle-aged dad with anger issues and a bad case of road rage.”

Peter opened his eyes and lifted his head off his pillow. Tony was leaning against his bedroom door, one hand in his pocket, the other resting at his side, a pair of sunglasses dangling from his hand.

Peter grinned and laid his head back down. “Cut out the road rage and it’s not even the first pissed off middle-aged dad that’s almost killed me.”

Tony smirked, shook his head, and walked further into the room. He tossed his sunglasses atop Peter’s dresser and looked around, eyes tracking over posters and photos. He reached out and nudged a broken circuit board Peter had pulled from a scrapped computer and tapped the side of an empty coffee cup before reaching into a forgotten bucket of Lego pieces and rutting around.

“So, you healing okay?” he asked, grabbing a few pieces of the plastic blocks and trying to make them fit together. “Happy said you weren’t wearing your seatbelt, that you got knocked around pretty good.”

“Just bruising,” Peter informed him, not making any effort to sit up. His back was a mess of blues and purples, or so it had been when May first ordered him to bed, made him lay on his stomach, and set every bag of frozen vegetables they owned on the bruises. He hadn’t moved since. “It’ll probably be gone by tomorrow, Monday at the latest.”

The Lego bucket rattled again. Tony grabbed a few more pieces before making his way over to the bed. He reached for the now soggy and limp bag of peas and let it drop to the floor with a _shlip_ sound before lifting up the edge of Peter’s shirt.

Tony frowned, let the shirt fall and sat on the edge of the bed, his hip pressing against Peter’s still sore knee as he distractedly tried to make the Legos fit together. “Hap said your Spidey-sense tingled.”

“It woke me up.”

Tony stopped playing with Legos and arched a brow. “It woke you up?”

“Yeah,” Peter said, “And it was definitely more than a tingle this time, it hurt.”

“It hurt?”

“Yeah, though not as bad as getting body slammed into a gearshift.”

Tony hummed again and returned his attention to the tiny plastic sculpture he was slowly building. “You know, I’ve spent millions, literal _millions_ of dollars developing the Iron Man suits. Jarvis, FRIDAY, your Karen. There’s a Stark satellite orbiting Earth so that I wouldn’t have to depend on other’s shitty technology. I have sensors on everything, cameras, x-rays, lasers, you name it. I’ve done everything I can possibly think of to keep me and mine safe.”

Tony fumbled with the Legos, dropped a few, and sighed, his shoulders slumping as he tossed the figure he’d been building towards the end of the bed. “I don’t think anything I’ve built would have been able to see that truck coming when you did.” Tony turned his eyes back to Peter. “Happy said you weren’t even near the alley when you woke up, that you were already in the front seat before he saw the truck.”

“I could hear it coming,” Peter said.

“You could _feel_ it coming,” Tony corrected. “It’s like you’re really a spider and the whole world’s your web.”

Peter didn’t really know what to say to that, so he didn’t try.

Tony sighed again, twisted his mouth to the side and took another look around Peter’s room. “I’m glad you have it though, this Spidey-sense. I mean, I’d rather you be bullet proof, but this…this works.”

There was silence then, and it would have been awkward except Peter didn’t think Tony had noticed it yet. He was still staring at the wall, eyes distant like he was thinking.

Peter couldn’t read Tony like he could May, but he knew whatever Tony was thinking, it wasn’t happy. His brow was furrowed, the corners of his mouth pinched, his eyes…sad?

“Does it bother you?” Peter asked, surprising both himself and Tony with the question.

Tony stopped his staring contest with Peter’s _Star Wars_ poster and looked to Peter. His expression quickly morphing from one of sadness to one of curiosity. “Does what bother me?”

“That you don’t know how it works? My Spidey-sense, I mean, as a scientist, does it bug you not knowing the answer?”

“It bugs the fuck out of me,” Tony admitted, sounding both aggravated and exasperated, all the stoic seriousness from a moment ago gone. “You seriously never felt anything when Natasha broke your face?”

“Not a tingle, no.”

“Hmmm.”

“You stab me again, I’m telling Aunt May.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just rewatched the first Avengers movie and loved how Tony kept poking Bruce with pointy things. I'm also re-reading all of the Ultimate Spider-man (2000) comic books and was reminded of how often Peter relied on his Spidey-Sense. Mix those two things and you get this...whatever it is.
> 
>  
> 
> Also, I want to thank everyone for the response these stories have been getting. This is my first time writing for this fandom, and it's always nerve wracking when you first put things out there because you have no idea what the response will be. You guys are beyond amazing and you feed my little fangirl addict heart.


	6. Reality is a drama queen.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> House fires happen all the time, right? That's normal?
> 
> What about superheroes coming to the rescue, is that normal, too?
> 
>  
> 
> Or the Parker's building catches fire and May gets to meet more of the Avengers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was a toss up between writing this mess or actually paying attention at work.
> 
> This mess won.
> 
> Or at least it got my attention.

May couldn’t really cook for shit, but she could bake cookies. Sort of.

As long as they were the kind you bought from the store, the cookie dough ready to go in little preformed squares. And as long as Peter was the one to set the timer.

But other than that, she could totally bake cookies.

It was a running joke, something Peter counted as a constant in his life: May couldn’t cook, but she still tried.

He was six years old the first time he heard the word ‘fuck’. Mary had laughed, her head thrown back as May pulled a blackened lasagna out of the oven. Peter didn’t remember if it was edible, but he did remember his mom standing on a chair, laughing as she tried to fan the smoke away from the smoke detector while May scowled and poked at the pan with a knife.

When he was nine, he watched as May stared at the remains of her high-end, non-stick, Teflon cooking pot and frowned. It had been a Christmas gift from Ben, one that Peter had helped wrap and put under the tree. May had used it twice before something that had started out as chicken curry _cemented_ itself to the edges. May had sighed, checked her bank account, and sighed again before dragging Peter to Macy’s to buy another identical pot. Peter had been forced to pinky promise never to tell Ben that the pot had to be replaced.

It was the day before Peter’s eleventh birthday when May decided it’d be fun to bake his cake that year. The night had ended with Ben driving around Queens trying to find a bakery that would sell last minute birthday cakes while Peter and May opened all the windows to air out the smoke and smell of charbroiled red velvet.

Peter was thirteen when Ben gave up and removed the batteries from the smoke alarm.

Now Peter was sixteen, lying in bed dreaming of Aunt May’s cookies and wondering why he’d forgotten to set the timer and trying to remember when Ben had replaced the batteries.

Except the high pitched shriek wasn’t a smoke alarm and the smell drifting in from under Peter’s door wasn’t burnt cookies.

“Peter!”

One of the draw backs of having been bitten by a radioactive spider was that sometimes things got turned up to eleven. It came in handy more often than not, sucked donkey dicks on occasion, and still, even after two years, took some getting used to.

Especially when first waking up.

And that was on a good day, with an alarm clock and the promise of poptarts and coffee.

Peter was out of bed the moment he registered his aunt’s panicked screams, his eyes watering, throat burning as the smoke filtered in. His senses were trying to process everything at once, that little tickle that was more a stab alerting him that something was wrong.

No shit.

When Peter was in first grade, he had learned all about fire safety. He knew he was supposed to feel the door, that he wasn’t supposed to open it if it was hot, and that the metal handle should never be touched.

Except Mr. Perkins hadn’t mentioned the sheer panic Peter would feel hearing his aunt scream his name.

The doorknob wasn’t hot, but the moment Peter pulled his door open he doubled over. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t see, and the sound of people screaming, sirens blaring, wood and cement shifting as they reacted to the law of thermodynamics…it all echoed in Peter’s head, melding together and threatening to send him over the edge.

“Peter!”

Peter coughed, put his hands over his mouth and tried to breathe in something other than smoke. “May?!”

“Oh my god, are you okay? You have to get out!” May was standing in the doorway of her bedroom, her hair pulled up in a lazy bun, her eyes wide as she stared over what was left of their living room.

The fire wasn’t high, but it had spread from the front door, down the length of their kitchen, and was currently ravaging their small sofa.

“Get out!” May yelled in between coughs. “I’ll meet you outside, go!”

Except Peter didn’t know how she planned to do that. The fire escape was on the other side of the living room, and last he checked she wasn’t the one who could climb up and down the side of a building.

Peter looked to his left, saw the fire reflecting in the living room window, heard the _crack_ of something that probably shouldn’t be cracking, and realized she was probably going to yell at him later for what he was about to do.

If they didn’t die first.

Which was kind of the plan.

“Stand back!” he ordered. He didn’t bother trying to take a deep breath. His lungs were burning, his throat was burning, the apartment was burning—breathing could wait until they were outside.

Hopefully.

Peter took a few steps back, guestimated the height of the fire, of the ceiling, figured he didn’t really have enough clearance, thought fuck it, and took a short, running start before bounding over the flames  towards his aunt.

It was sort of the holy trinity of shitty circumstances. Between the lack of oxygen, his strained and overwhelmed senses, and the fact that the apartment was in flames, Peter counted it a win that he hadn’t broken his neck and his boxers didn’t catch fire, never mind the fact that he’d landed on his shoulder, hit his head, or that he’d just murdered his kidneys when his back collided with the door frame.

“What are you doing?” May was in panic mode. Her hands were up, fingers flexed as she stared at him, eyebrows as high as they could go. “Oh my god, are you okay?”

“Get on my back,” Peter told her, climbing to his feet and trying to ignore the pain shooting from hip to shoulder. “We gotta go, May.”

“You’re bleeding,” she pushed his hair back off his forehead and frowned. Her voice was high, breathy.

“May, listen to me,” Peter coughed, pushed her hands away, and grabbed her face, making sure her panicked eyes were focusing on him. “We have to get out of here. I need you to get on my back, okay?”

“Why?” she asked. But then she must have realized why, because her frown shifted from one of concern to a more familiar _are you fucking kidding me_?

“It’s that or burn,” he said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her arm over his shoulder as he turned. “Piggy back, let’s go.”

There were mutterings that rhymed with _this is a terrible idea, oh my god,_ and _we’re gonna be okay, we’re gonna be okay_ as she climbed onto his back. Peter made sure she was secure, her arms wrapped around his neck, her ankles locked in front of him before he jumped, fingers and toes sticking to the soot covered ceiling.

Those mutterings sounded a lot more like _holy fuck_ and _oh my god_ as she buried her face into the back of his neck.

The ceiling was hot, hinting that the floor above was on fire as well, and Peter tried not to think about Mr. Quinton and his wife, or the weird guy with three chihuahuas, or Steve from 12-C.

May first, then the others.

Peter had never carried someone on his back before, not when he was upside down. He’d also never had someone muttering a steady litany of holyfuckholyfuckholyfuck into his ear while doing so.

It was awkward, made all the worse by the flames dancing below them and the fact that Peter was moving on memory alone because he couldn’t see anything that wasn’t fire or smoke.

The window was hot to the touch, the flames close enough that there wasn’t really anywhere to step down without catching fire. Peter pulled the window open, said a silent prayer that no one was watching, and climbed out onto the fire escape. Upside down. Yeah, nothing to see here, folks. 

But that was the beauty of disaster; people were too busy _looking_ to actually _see_ anything. The air wasn’t any clearer out on the landing, the smoke and heat were still in the air, but Peter could see now. Better yet, he could _breathe_.

“Come on, baby,” May urged, gaining her feet and pushing Peter towards the stairs. “We gotta go,” and Peter was pretty sure he had been the one telling her that five minutes ago.

The street was crowded. Neighbors, policemen, firefighters, nosey onlookers, and news crews took up every square inch. The second they reached the sidewalk, they were being shepherded away from the building, being passed from fireman to fireman to police officer before someone pointed to a section of pavement that was clear and ordered them to sit down.

And then they were alone.

Or as alone as two people in the midst of crowded chaos could be.

Peter gave his aunt a cursory look over. Her hair was now a disheveled mess, her face was streaked with sweat and tears and soot. She was wearing one of Ben’s old shirts and a ratty pair of flannel shorts, and she had this look on her face. It was a mix of anger and grief and determination. And it was all directed at Peter.

“Stay here,” she ordered, her voice shaking. “Do not—”

“May, I have—” Peter began, but May cut him off. She shook her head, made this noise that was half sob, half growl.

“You don’t _have_ to do _anything_.”

“People are still inside.”

“The firemen will get them out.”

“I could help.”

“How?” she snapped, nostrils flaring, snot running as she tried not to cry. “How Peter? You don’t have your suit, you don’t have…you don’t have anything! Look at you!” she yelled, pushing angrily against his shoulder. “You’re barefoot, you’re in your underwear and a freaking t-shirt, Peter. They’re not going to let you charge into a burning building. They’re not—you aren’t going back in there.”

She sobbed again and buried her face in her hands.

Peter tried to argue but instead of a well-worded explanation for how he needed to help, all that came out was a series of hacking coughs.

May let her fingers slide down her face so that they were only covering her mouth. She was openly crying now. Her tears were streaking through the soot on her cheeks. “You don’t have your inhaler,” she murmured behind her fingers as her eyes looked worryingly from Peter to the fire.

Peter frowned.

“I don’t have asthma anymore, May,” Peter said softly, grabbing her shoulders. She knew this. “Remember?”

There was a moment where she looked confused, like she couldn’t understand what he was saying. But then she laughed, not a real laugh, more of a scoff. She took a step back, placed one hand on her hip while the other wiped at her running nose.

She stared at the fire, tears slowly falling but her breaths steadying. Finally, she looked at Peter and in a fiercely stern voice said, “You are not going into that building. I am not—you’re not leaving me. Do you understand?”

She had this look on her face. It was a look Peter had only seen once before, back when they’d just buried her husband and they both realized they were officially all each other had.

“You are not going back in there,” she repeated. “Peter, I swear to god—”

“Okay,” he agreed. Because yeah, they were all each other had. Peter looked up at the fire blazing across the street. They were _literally_ all each other had.

May was still going, her hands constantly moving through the air as she begged him, _ordered_ him. “Just let the firemen do it, please. I can’t—“

“I’m staying here,” Peter assured her. He grabbed her wrist, stopping her frantic rambling. “I promise.”

She tensed for a moment, eyes still hard as she searched his face, looking for the lie. The moment she realized it wasn’t there, she deflated, her face looking relieved.

“The firemen will help them,” she said, more as a reassurance than a plea.

“I know,” Peter lied.

“Ma’am? Are you okay?” And suddenly they weren’t alone anymore.

Medics or not, May was not letting Peter out of her sight. She had a death grip on his hand as they sat on the sidewalk, an EMT shining lights in their eyes as they gasped greedily into the oxygen masks they’d been given.

Peter let the man look at the cut on his forehead, groaned when he pressed on it none-too-gently, and went through the routine of _yes, I can breathe. No, I’m not dizzy. Yes, I’m sure. No, I don’t want to go to the hospital. I’m fine. Go tend to someone else._

The man left them with their oxygen masks and a promise to be back. Neither knew what to say so they just sat there, watching their home burn.

“Parker!”

Peter shared a surprised and confused look with May before turning towards the sound of their name.

Happy Hogan was pushing his way through the crowd, his forehead wrinkled, face stern as he scanned the area. “PARKER!” he yelled.

“Happy?” Peter called back, standing and letting the oxygen mask fall to the ground. Happy turned and Peter could honestly say that he’d _never_ seen Happy look so relieved to see him.

Happy was wearing a pair of sweat pants and a faded t-shirt. He had on a pair of slip-on sandals and his hair was a disheveled mess. Add to that the hint of a five o’clock shadow and he looked every bit the image of a man that had been pulled out of bed in a hurry.

Happy’s eyes went from Peter to May, his shoulders falling in visible relief. “Okay,” he said, running his hand through his hair as he approached them. “Okay, you’re okay. That’s good. You are okay, right?”

“Yeah, we’re okay.”

“You’re bleeding,” Happy pointed to the knot on Peter’s forehead and frowned. “We talked about this, didn’t we? About you saying you’re okay when you’re not? That was an actual conversation.”

“I hit my head,” Peter admitted. Happy continued to frown. “And my shoulder…and maybe my back.”

May was frowning now. She lifted the back of Peter’s shirt. Her eyes widened, hinting that it looked as bad as it felt, but she didn’t say anything, just let the shirt fall and gave Peter a knowing, warning look that promised further discussion.

Happy narrowed his eyes, before letting them slide towards May. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she assured him.

“For real not hurt? Or not hurt like he’s not hurt? Because I don’t know if it’s a Parker thing or just a Peter thing.”

“It’s a Peter thing,” she said sourly, causing Happy to smile.

Oh look, Happy made a new friend.

 “What are you doing here?” Peter asked.

“FRIDAY woke me up, said a fire had been reported at your address,” he started patting the pockets of his sweatpants, hands fishing for his keys. “Tony said to bring you to the tower. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“I thought Mr. Stark was out of town,” Peter said, following Happy through the crowd.

Happy already had his phone to his ear. He gave Peter a familiar annoyed glance and said, “He is,” before looking away and directing his attention to whoever was on the phone. “Yeah, Tony. I got them. They’re fine, kid’s a little banged up but he’ll probably be good as new tomorrow. Yeah, I know. I know. Have you met me? This isn’t my first rodeo. Yeah, I’ll call you.”

He hung up and unlocked the car. “A doctor’s gonna meet us at the tower,” he explained as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

Peter crawled into the backseat. “A medic already looked us over,” Peter explained.

“But it won’t hurt for a doctor to follow up,” May added, giving him a stern look as she climbed in beside him.

Happy smirked at Peter through the rearview mirror.

Great.

“Buckle up, kid.”

* * *

 

The sun was coming up when May finally managed to fall asleep. Her forehead was creased even as she slept. She was wearing a borrowed pair of Pepper’s pajama bottoms and one of Tony’s old AC/DC shirts. Her hair was damp from the shower, leaving a wet stain on the pillow as she tossed and turned.

Peter could still smell the smoke mixed in with the scent of expensive shampoo and deodorant.

The doctor had looked them over, poked and prodded and scanned and eventually gave them a reluctant all clear.

Happy had herded them towards Peter’s bedroom after that, urging them to take a shower and get some sleep.

“We’ll deal with everything tomorrow. There’s nothing more to do right now.”

He’d handed them the stolen clothes and left.

Peter glanced at the clock on the nightstand and frowned. It was just after six in the morning. He was tired, sore, _exhausted_.

But he couldn’t sleep.

He was sat in bed, back to the headboard as he stared around the room, the sun slowly rising through the window illuminating everything he owned in the world.

There were a few t-shirts in the closet, one pair of jeans that he’d outgrown during his last growth spurt, and a series of empty web canisters scattered on the desk. He didn’t really keep a lot of stuff at the tower. He never saw the point. He could always just bring what he needed with him.

Peter was starting to regret that decision.

May shifted in the bed next to him, made a sound half-way between a snore and a gasp, before sitting up, her eyes wide as she looked around.

She blinked at the sunlight and looked at Peter.

“How long was I asleep?”

“Maybe an hour.”

“Ugh,” she groaned as she let herself fall back onto the pillows. “I dreamed I couldn’t find you in the fire.”

“I’m right here.”

“I know.”

She sighed, took a steading breath that hinted she was trying not to cry and rolled so she was facing Peter. “Lay down, sweetie. You need to sleep.”

Peter felt himself laugh. “Yeah, I don’t see that happening, May.”

“Try.”

Peter took a deep breath, let it out through his nose, and shifted so that he was lying on his side, facing his aunt.

“We’re gonna be okay,” she said.

“I know.”

“It was just an apartment. Just things.”

“I know.”

She stared at him, reached out and pushed his hair off his forehead, her fingers tracing the bandage the doctor had placed on his head. “We haven’t done this in a while.”

Peter smiled. “I think I outgrew it.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, sounding sad. “You used to be our little cuddle monster. Remember that? You had to sleep between me and Ben, every night.”

Peter wrinkled his nose at the memory. “Not every night.”

“Every night.” May smiled. “But then we got you a bunk bed and you thought that was the coolest thing ever. Then it was just some nights.”

Peter laughed and closed his eyes. Ben had showed him how to make a fort, draping his Captain America sheets down from the top bunk and lining the edge of the frame with his action figures and toy trucks.

It had been enough to coax Peter into sleeping in his own bed. Mostly. But there were still nights when even a magical fort hadn’t been enough. Peter’s parents had just died, and no amount of toys and glow in the dark stars or Jedi action figures was going to make it better.

Ben and May had understood that.

Then Ben died.

Peter remembered waking up to find May sleeping on the couch one night, face tearstained as she explained that her bed was too big, too empty. Peter had dragged his blanket from his room, wrapped it around them both as they huddled together and cried. They had eventually fallen asleep, shoulders pressed together and their heads tilted back on the couch at an awkward angle.

There was just something about loss that demanded comfort.

“We’re gonna be okay.”

At least no one died this time.

* * *

 

“How’s the noggin?”

Peter blinked. “What?”

Tony was sat at the counter, steadily picking out bamboo shoots from a container of Chinese takeout with a pair of chopsticks. “Your head? I’m assuming that band-aid isn’t for aesthetics.”

“Oh,” Peter reached up and pulled the bandage from his forehead. “It’s fine. I thought you were out of town.”

“ _Were_ being the key word.” Tony popped a piece of broccoli in his mouth. “Flight landed a few hours ago. You’ve been asleep half the day.”

“Sorry,” Peter apologised. He’d woken up a few minutes before, surprised that he’d even managed to fall asleep. A quick glance at the clock on the microwave showed it to be just past 2:00.

“Don’t be. You needed it.” Tony stabbed the chopsticks in his food and set it to the side. He folded his arms on the counter and gave Peter a studying look. “You okay?”

Peter shrugged and climbed onto the stool next to Tony. “I guess so. I mean, we’re not hurt.”

Tony arched a brow.

“We’re not seriously hurt,” Peter amended, fingers trailing over the knot on his head. He didn’t know what it looked like, but it _felt_ like it was healing. “We’ll be okay.”

Tony sighed, passed Peter the container of food and said, “Yeah, you will.” He walked to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. “Chug this,” he ordered, handing the bottle to Peter. “You sound like you’ve been smoking a pack a day.”

Peter frowned but did as he was told.

“Your aunt’s on the phone with the insurance company,” Tony said pushing the food closer to Peter, encouraging him to eat. “I’ve been informed that me buying you a new apartment is out of the question.”

Peter laughed as he struggled to pick up a piece of shrimp with the chopsticks. “Yeah, I could have told you how that would go. May’s not big on taking charity.”

“So I’ve heard. But she has agreed that you need new clothes. Apparently she doesn’t want her baby boy going to school wearing Iron Man’s hand-me-downs.”

Peter glanced down at the oversized Stark Industries t-shirt he was wearing. He hadn’t even thought about school. His backpack was gone, his textbooks, his computer…

“My suit’s gone,” Peter realized.

“Maybe,” Tony shrugged. “It’s supposed to be fireproof, if not I can build you another. I’ve got a call in to the fire chief, he’ll let me know when it’s clear for us to go do a walkthrough, see if we can salvage anything.”

“We can do that?”

“If the building’s still structurally sound, yes,” Tony said, grabbing the chopsticks out of Peter’s hand and giving him a fork. “If not, I’ll make a few more calls. Now eat.”

Peter ate.

Then he showered again before he and May jumped in the back of Happy’s car, Tony’s credit card in May’s pocket.

“Just the essentials, Stark. We don’t need more than that right now. Just a few things. The adjuster said it should only be a couple of weeks before the check is cut.”

 “Got it. Get the kid some new undies, some shoes, shirts, one of those plastic lunch boxes with my face on it.”

“Tony—“

“Just take the card, May.”

May was studying the price tag on a pair of jeans. Her jaw was clenched and she was blinking fast. Peter knew she was about to cry.

“May,” he said, grabbing the jeans and throwing them in the shopping cart, “My suit cost more than all the clothes in this store combined. I’m pretty sure he’s not even gonna blink at a thirty dollar pair of jeans.”

May stared at him. “How much was that suit worth?”

“Millions,” Peter told her. “I don’t know the exact price but it was up there.”

May blinked.

Then she grabbed two more pair of jeans and threw them in the cart.

“Look they have your nerd shirts,” Happy murmured, holding up a graphic tee with the words ‘NEVER trust an ATOM; they make up EVERYTHING’ emblazoned on the front. “I got you one of each,” he said as he dumped a pile of colored shirts into the basket.

“I can pick out my own clothes you know?” Peter said grabbing a pack of underwear and adding it to the pile.

“Whatever. I’m going to get you a backpack. You want one of the ones with a cartoon character on it or you want to pretend to be a grownup?”

“Ugh.” 

* * *

 

“Why does Ned Leeds have my phone number?”

Peter was sitting on the floor of his room, trying to sort out his newly bought things from his aunt’s. He looked up at Tony and frowned. “Uhhh…”

Tony was leaning in the doorway, his phone in his hand, his eyes narrowed at Peter. “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t pass out my number?”

“I didn’t…”

“Well, he’s sent me no less than forty text messages in the last fourteen hours and has left a total of…seven voicemails. So either you or Happy let it slip.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Whatever. Here, just call him, let him know you’re okay,” Tony tossed his phone to Peter before turning to leave, “And maybe clue him in on what will happen if he gives that number out.”

Peter looked at the list of text messages, cringed in second-hand embarrassment, and hit the call button.

Ned answered immediately. “ _Hello?”_

“Dude, how did you get this number?”

“ _Oh my god, you’re alive! Peter, man, my mom saw it on the news! MJ’s been going crazy and your phone keeps saying it’s disconnected_.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s nothing but charcoal now.” Peter groaned and decided he didn’t want to think about what his phone probably looked like. “But we’re fine. We’re staying at the tower.”

“ _Dude, do you live with Iron Man now?”_

“Uh…sort of?” Peter looked around his room. “For now anyway.”

“ _That is so cool.”_

“Dude...”

_“I mean, it totally sucks that your apartment burned down, but still…you’re like living with Iron Man? Are the other Avengers there? Do you have to share a bathroom with the Hulk?_

Peter rubbed tiredly at his forehead. He didn’t really have the energy to deal with Ned’s Avenger induced glee at the moment. “Everyone has their own space, Ned.”

 _“Yeah, I mean that makes sense,”_ Ned said, sounding way too disappointed. _“Oh, my mom wants to know if you guys need anything. Like clothes or a toothbrush or stuff?”_

“Nah, we’re good. Mr. Stark let us use his credit card. We’ve got the essentials.” Peter looked at the numerous bags spread out around him. “Maybe a little more.”

“ _That’s cool.”_

Totally cool. Tony Stark paid for his underwear. He also bought enough “essentials” to send his aunt into a pride fueled panic.

“It’s fine, May.”

“It’s not fine, Peter.” She stared at the receipt and shook her head. “We are not going to take advantage of his generosity.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Peter sighed. “I’m just saying let him buy us a toothbrush without freaking out.”

“You have nine new shirts.”

“That was all Happy.”

“I’m gonna pay him back. As soon as the insurance company cuts a check, we’re paying him back.”

“…Okay.”

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just…I get the feeling that if you two decide to get in a fight over who can afford to buy what, the billionaire is gonna win.”

“We’re paying him back.”

“Okay.”

She eventually let it go. Not really. She just stopped mentioning it, but Peter saw the way her jaw flexed, her nostrils flared every time Tony tried to take control.

Tony saw it, too.

“How stubborn are we talking here? Like on a scale of Happy to Thor’s hammer …..how likely am I to get my way with your aunt?”

“She’s worse than you.”

“I doubt that.”

“It’s your funeral.”

Tony decided to play it smart and let Pepper deal with May.

* * *

 

Things sort of moved in a sluggish sense of surrealness after that, or at least for the next few days. Peter ate cereal with Captain America, he went back to school, got a temporary pass on all his homework, and got to see May try to accept the fact that she now lived down the hall from what equated to a real-life, modern-day Jekyll and Hyde.

Unfortunately, her reaction wasn’t what Peter had expected.

“He’s kind of cute, isn’t he?”

“He turns into a ginormous green rage machine, like, a literal representation of anger.”

“Don’t be rude.”

“It’s not like it’s a secret, May. Everybody knows.”

“Bruce is a sweetheart. I can see why you like him.”

“That is not why I like him. I promise you.”

May meeting Steve Rogers didn’t exactly go as Peter had pictured it either.

It started with training, something to help distract from the fact that they were pretty much homeless. Sort of.

Peter was wearing a pair of Tony’s sweats and an old t-shirt. He was barefoot, web shooters on his wrist, fingers flexing as he bounced on his feet.

Steve was sat on a work bench.

May was frowning.

“He’s not going to, like, break you or anything, right?” she asked Peter, arms crossed over her chest as she watched America’s hero remove his shoes.

“I’m a lot stronger than I look.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“It’ll be fine, May,” Peter said. “We’ve done this before.”

“He’s bigger than you, sweetie,” she whispered, like it was a secret.

“Everyone’s bigger than me, May.” And yeah, ugh. “I’ll be fine.”

“Just be careful.”

Peter was pretty sure May’s definition of being careful didn’t include trash talking Captain America.

“Are you even trying? I distinctly remember this being harder the first time around.”

Steve smirked, rolled his shoulders, and brought his hands back up. “Believe it or not, I went easy on you the first time.”

“Dude, you dropped a loading bridge on me.”

“You stole my shield.”

“I feel those two things aren’t equal in severity.” Peter jumped out of the way, his webbing pulling him clear of Steve’s reach. “Like, from my point of view, you overreacted.”

“I overreacted?”

“Just a smidge.”

Steve laughed, swung a heavy fist and caught Peter on the shoulder. Peter retaliated by wrapping Steve’s fist in a sticky web.

“What is--,” Steve shook his hand, face crumpling into a confused little frown as he tried and failed to pick the webbing off. He looked at Peter gestured to his hand with a “really?” kind of grimace.

“Something wrong, Cap?” Peter asked, tongue tucked between his teeth. “Weren’t you just saying something about being able to take me out with one hand tied behind your back?”

Steve raised his fists, web and all. “Bring it Spider-Boy.”

“It’s spider-Man,” Peter sighed. “Come on.”

“You’re like twelve.”

“Sixteen and don’t even start. I’ve seen pics of you before you got all juiced up. I might be small now, but like you said, I’m young. At least I have a chance of finishing puberty.”

Steve frowned, placed a hand playfully over his heart, and said, “Ouch.”

Then he finally caught Peter.

And it was Peter’s turn to say ouch.

* * *

 

“How ya doing, slugger?”

Peter dropped the icepack and glared at his aunt. “I know you think you’re being funny, but you’re really not.”

May wrinkled her nose and tried to suppress her smile. “Do you want me to go beat him up for you?”

“You against Captain America?”

“Hey, I’ll have you know I’ve got a pretty mean swing. Just ask Stacy Ramirez.”

“Who’s Stacy Ramirez?”

“My tenth grade nightmare,” May answered distractedly. She grabbed Peter’s chin and tilted his head to the side so she could look at the bruising on his cheek. “This doesn’t look _too_ bad. Considering.”

“I think he was pulling his punches.”

“Lucky you,” she deadpanned. “I guess they don’t really teach them to take it easy in the Army do they. I mean, they teach ‘em to go all in, huh?” She made a little punching motion in the air and bit her lip.

“Maybe,” Peter shrugged, “but I’m pretty sure Cap learned how to ‘go all in’ long before he left Brooklyn.”

May grinned, gave a shrug that roughly translated to _probably_ , and gently placed the icepack back on the bruise. She gave Peter’s uninjured cheek a loving pat and was just about to walk away before her eyes suddenly widened.

“Steve Rogers.”

Peter frowned. “What?”

“He’s from Brooklyn.”

“Yeah…”

“Steve from Brooklyn,” May said calmly, arms folding across her chest.

“Yeah. It’s on his Wikipedia page—where are you going?” he asked as she turned on her heel and determinedly marched out the door. “May?”

Peter found out where she went fifteen minutes later when Captain America walked into the kitchen, his head ducked towards the ground, expression sheepish.

He stood across from Peter, rubbed his hand along the back of his neck and said, “I’ve been informed I owe you an apology.”

“For what?” Peter pointed at his bruised cheek and asked, “For this? Because dude, that was--,”

“Germany,” Steve cut in.

Peter frowned. Germany was over a year ago, and Peter wasn’t even mad about that. Why would…

But then Peter remembered, almost like a strange sense of Déjà vu, the way his Aunt had fussed over a black eye and demanded to know who had done it.

_“Who was it? Who hit you?”_

_“Some guy…”_

_“What’s “some guy’s” name?”_

_“Uhh…Steve!”_

_“Steve? From 12-C? With the overbite?”_

_“No, no no, you don’t know him. He’s from Brooklyn.”_

Okay, technically it hadn’t been a lie. But looking at the way the captain’s face twisted in a weird combination of amused guilt, Peter was starting to think lying might have been better.

“Please tell me my aunt did not yell at you.”

“I wouldn’t call it yelling…” Steve said, face almost a wince with a trace of a smile.

“Dude,” Peter whispered, closing his eyes and letting his forehead bang against the counter. Maybe if he hit it hard enough he could pretend this wasn’t happening. “I am so, so sorry.”

“She’s a very… _impressive_ woman.”

Peter was mortified.

Tony was ecstatic.

“Heard your Aunt yelled at Cap.”

“She didn’t yell,” Peter informed him, squeezing chocolate syrup into two large glasses of milk. “It was more of a stern talking to.”

“I’ve been on the receiving end of one of your aunt’s _talking to’_ s,” Tony said, smile wide as he accepted one of the glasses and began to stir. “There’s still a lot of yelling.”

He wasn’t wrong. “Yeah…can we not talk about it?”

“Kid, don’t fret,” Tony assured him. He took a large gulp of milk, sighed, and wiped away the chocolatey mustache. “Pretty sure getting your balls busted by May Parker is like a rite of passage. The Cap’s a big boy, he can handle it.”

“She made him apologise.”

Tony chuckled as he took another sip. “Yeah, she did.”

* * *

 

 

It was three days later before Tony finally heard back from the fire chief.

What hadn’t been savaged by the fire was pretty much destroyed by the water. The whole building wreaked of smoke and mold and something distinctly chemical. It set Peter’s gag reflex off and made his eyes burn.

They’d brought a few laundry baskets, two to be exact, to toss in everything they were going to save.

They barely filled one.

They found Peter’s suit. It was soaked and smelled something fierce, but mostly unharmed. Tony assured him he could fix it.

May managed to uncover a fire-proof safe box that held all the important things; birth certificates, social security cards, guardianship papers, family photos—that sort of thing.

She found her wedding ring.

But that was it.

“It’s just things,” Peter reminded her, fingers gripping the edge of the plastic laundry basket so tightly the handles cracked. “Just an apartment.”

May wiped away a tear, adjusted the ring on her finger, and smiled. It was a sad smile, but it was still a smile. “Just an apartment.”

Peter smiled back. “We’ll be okay.”

Tony clapped them both on the shoulder. “Yeah you will.” He gave their shoulders a tight squeeze and then pulled on his sunglasses. “Now come on, we’ve got a new apartment to buy.”

May frowned. “Tony…”

Tony didn’t buy the apartment, but he did set them up with the best real estate agent in New York.

“You’re sure you want to stay in Queens?”

“Yes.”

“Alright then…”

In Peter’s opinion, trying to buy a new home was almost as traumatizing as losing the first one. It wasn’t as simple as finding one you liked and writing a check.

There was so much paper work.

Like so much.

It gave Peter anxiety and he wasn’t even the one signing any of it.

Then there was the issue of school zones and number of bedrooms and bathrooms and whether it had room for a washing machine or did it have maintenance fees, were they going to have to park on the street, how far was the subway? One question right after the other and Peter found himself hating the entire process.

He just wanted their old apartment back. He wanted to listen to creaky floorboards and snuggle in his bunkbed.

“Just look at it as an adventure,” May said, her voice full of fake excitement. “It’s a chance for a clean slate, we get to start over.”

Except neither one of them wanted to start over, and they both knew it.

But they couldn’t really complain, or at least it _felt_ like they couldn’t. Everyone kept pointing out how lucky they were to have survived, how fortunate they were that Mr. Stark was giving them a place to stay.

“You’re allowed to be pissed, kid,” Tony informed him one night. “People don’t get to dictate your pain.”

Peter was lying on his bed, his arm covering his eyes. “You going to therapy again?”

“I’m serious. No one died, but you still lost your home.”

Peter felt something soft and light land on his stomach. He opened his eyes to see his suit’s mask looking up at him, all traces of soot and mold gone.

He looked up at Tony who was busy playing with one of Peter’s web shooters. “You want to grieve? Grieve. Blow off some steam. Climb to the highest building, do a back flip off and scream Geronimo if that helps.” He pressed something he shouldn’t have, shot a web onto the light fixture, winced, and tossed the web shooter to Peter. “No one’s gonna judge you.”

 

Ben was an adrenaline junkie. Peter’s dad was, too, or so he was told. He’d seen pictures of the two when they were younger; skydiving, bungee jumping, dirt bike racing.

“It was an addiction,” May had explained. “Like a natural high. I just couldn’t understand it.”

Peter could.

It was like flying. Like giving gravity the middle finger as he swung from one building to the next, his stomach fluttering, the wind thundering in his ears.

A natural high.

And Peter loved it.

He flew through Times Square, followed 47th before circling back up towards the Rockefeller Center. Manhattan was different from Queens. The buildings were bigger, the lights seemingly brighter.

The people louder.

He loved it.

All of it.

It was well into the night before he made it back to the tower.

Tony was in his workshop, a screwdriver held between his teeth, eyes narrowed as he worked a soldering iron along a circuit board. He glanced up when Peter walked in, took one look at the sweaty hair and flushed cheeks and asked, “Better?”

Peter just grinned. 

* * *

 

The new apartment was definitely bigger than the last. It still only had one bathroom, but they now had a special area specifically designated for a dining table, so yeah, there was that.

“Corner apartment, means two fire escapes,” Tony pointed out as he walked from room to room. “If you don’t use them for fires, it’ll at least make it easier for the wunderkind to sneak back in.”

Peter smiled when May rolled her eyes.

“He could just use the front door.”

“Yeah, I’m sure the new neighbors won’t notice Spider-Man taking the elevator.”

There wasn’t really a moving _day._ Not really. On Friday, they had furniture delivered. Nothing fancy, just a new sofa, some dressers, a TV and something to put it on.

And beds-- a queen for May and a new bunkbed for Peter.

“Haven’t you outgrown those?”

“Can you outgrow those?”

“The answer is yes.”

The ‘dining room’ was still empty.

On Saturday, they packed everything they’d accumulated since the fire and moved it from the tower to their new home. It wasn’t as much as they thought.  Peter’s new clothes took up a few inches of his closet and exactly one drawer in his new dresser.

May grabbed a disposable cup to hold their toothbrushes. It looked kind of pitiful sitting there all alone on the bathroom sink.

It was a work in progress. A slow one. They didn’t really realize what they didn’t have until they needed it, and then it was a rush, a sort of frantic race to get it, to make everything normal, because everything had to be okay now.

It was going to be okay.

They bought a trash can when they realized they couldn’t stack takeaway boxes on the counter. They bought a vacuum and a broom when may spilt popcorn kernels on the floor and they had to ‘sweep’ them up with their fingers and a dirty shirt. Shower curtain, light bulbs, extension cords, one thing after another.

They bought new dishes once they ran out of paper plates.

They bought a first-aid kit when Peter came home bleeding, dripping blood on their new floor.

“It’s okay, May.”

“Blood is supposed to be on the inside, sweetie. Says so in the user manual.”

“It’s just a little cut, it’ll stop bleeding in a minute.”

“If you say so.”

“You look like you’re about to freak out.”

“But _am_ I freaking out?”

“No.”

“Okay then.”

“Okay.”

And they would be okay, it was a given. They’d survived worse. Life would eventually get back to normal, Peter knew it would. He knew that one day they’d be able to talk about it and not feel like throwing up.

Right now though, it was like playing pretend, going through the motions, following the script because that’s what they were supposed to do.

Peter went to school and May went to work.

They ordered Thai food and pizza, binge watched Netflix, and avoided their new neighbors. Perfectly normal.

It was over a month after they’d moved in when May decided to bake a batch of cookies, which she was good at.

As long as Peter remembered to set the timer.

Which he sometimes forgot.

The new smoke alarm sounded just like their old one, the same beep-beep-beep that had echoed through the apartment before Ben had removed the batteries.

Peter had never heard a more terrifying sound.

But it was okay, it wasn’t the end of their world. Not again.

May ran to the kitchen to turn off the oven while Peter jumped onto the ceiling to turn off the smoke alarm.

It was a quick little press of a button and the beep-beep-beeping stopped. Peter sighed, smiled, and then looked down at his aunt.

May was standing there, oven mitted hands on her hips as she stared up at Peter, her head tilted to the side.

“Okay, I’ll admit it, _that_ little trick is gonna come in handy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI my lovelies, it's been brought to my attention that some people have been confused by my continuing to post chapters to this story even though it is marked 'complete.'
> 
> This isn't a multi-chapter story. Each individual chapter can stand alone as its own story, and I will not post a cliff-hanger/incomplete story on this thread.
> 
> When I post a one-shot under this title, it is finished. The description states that it's a series of drabbles and one shots, and that's what it will continue to be. I don't know if I'll post another "chapter" to this story until I write one and deem it qualifies to fit in this thread.
> 
> The chapters aren't related, they aren't in any chronological order, so if a reader wanted to read this, they wouldn't have to worry about an unfinished story, and they shouldn't follow this story expecting there to be another chapter.
> 
> I hope that isn't confusing!
> 
> Also, I blame the whole thing with Cap in this chapter on the Ultimate comic book May yelling at J. Jonah Jameson every time he was mean to Peter. She's a yeller in my mind, not really a yeller kind of yeller, but a definite talk to you in an exasperated and judgmental kind of way. Like my Nana...


	7. Cinnamon Rolls and other Tooth Rotting things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter befriends Bucky, because why not?
> 
> Tony needs coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My sister has been asking me "where's Bucky? Why can't I get a story with Bucky? Do you not love Bucky? You're gonna write a Bucky story soon, right? Because you love him? Not as much as me, but you love him? Right? You can put Peter in it, too."
> 
> This was written to distract me from my returning stomach ulcer, to combat impending writer's block, and to get my lovely, darling sister to stfu.
> 
> Also, this is the shortest installment yet...
> 
> Enjoy.

Peter Parker was what the kids called a Cinnamon Roll.

Whatever the fuck that meant.

But Tony could agree, at least it _sounded_ right, or it did at the moment while he was standing in the kitchen, back leaned up against the counter, coffee cup in hand, and forehead wrinkled in baffled amusement as he watched what had to be the most surreal and… _innocent_ scene play out around the living room coffee table.

If anything involving James Buchanan Barnes could be categorized as “innocent.” But yeah, Tony wasn’t going to touch that. Not before he’d finished his coffee anyhow.

But there he was, sitting on the floor, legs folded beneath him, back pressed to the couch. He’d pulled his hair up into something resembling a slept-on messy bun and his beard was growing in thicker. Add in the metal arm and he looked like some sort of commando hipster.

But he was smiling. Sort of. There was a definite smirk on his face. Probably had something to do with the fact that Peter was sitting across from him, legs folded just the same, lips pressed together in a tight line as his concentrating little frown caused the bridge of his nose to wrinkle.

Damn he looked young.

Peter seemed to be thinking hard, strategizing, but Barnes didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He looked at the two cards still in his hand as he casually popped a pizza roll in his mouth. “You’ve only got five cards,” he said, licking the grease off his fingers, “You either have one to lay down or you don’t.”

Peter rearranged his cards, looked at the pile already on the coffee table, looked back at the cards in his hand, and then glanced up to Barnes.

“How’s the whole anger management thing going?”

Barnes froze halfway to grab another pizza roll, the smirk falling away as he stared at Peter. “Kid, if you put down another fucking Draw Four…”

“It’s kinda your fault. You know, if you think about it,” Peter said, fighting a smile and trying to look apologetic as he set down the card. “If you hadn’t laid down green, I wouldn’t have had to do this.”

Barnes continued to stare, face blank, eyes focused on Peter, and for a brief moment, Tony felt a sense of panic, of worry that Barnes wasn’t really doing so well with the whole rehabilitation thing, because Tony had seen that look before.

But the panic passed as soon as it came, because Barnes sighed, shook his head and said with a deadpanned tone, “You little shit.”

Peter simply smiled as “Bucky” reached forward and drew four more UNO cards.

Tony wasn’t gonna lie, this was not what he imagined happening when he agreed to take Barnes in. There had been an argument about rehabilitation, reintegration, and relaxation—all things that could have happened somewhere else—but whatever. Tony still hadn’t finished his coffee, so time to change the subject.

He remembered Peter walking off the elevator weeks before, steps faltering as he saw Barnes standing beside Steve Rogers. Tony had kind of forgotten about the whole Germany thing—forgotten, chosen to mentally suppress, whatever—and only remembered at that moment that Peter had gone hand to hand with the man so many years before.

There were a few moments of stifling awkward silence as Peter looked back and forth between the two towering men and Tony who’d been perched on the couch, chin propped on his fist as he took in the scene.

In hindsight, Tony probably should have warned the kid.

He probably would have had he remembered that Peter was coming over.

But Steve, ever the commanding gentleman, gracefully bulldozed through the awkwardness in a way that only he could. He gave Peter a welcoming nod and then gestured toward Barnes. “Hey, Peter. This is my friend--,”

Peter nodded, hands fiddling with the cuffs of his sleeves. “Yeah, we uh, we’ve met,” he said, voice low as he looked to Barnes, posture stiff, looking very much like he was teetering on the line between fight or flight.

Tony vaguely wondered what his Spidey-sense was doing.

But Barnes, brainwashed or not, picked up on Peter’s obvious discomfort too, because he immediately stopped his posturing, uncrossed his arms, and adopted something that looked like an amused and cocky crooked smile, head tilted to the side as he gestured to Peter with his chin, “You the bug boy?”

Peter rolled his eyes and looked both somewhat annoyed and embarrassed. “Spider-Man,” he corrected, and yeah, he was adorable.

Barnes’ grin grew, clearly amused, as he stepped forward, “Okay then,” he said, offering his hand, “I’m Bucky.”

Peter gave Tony a quick look before reaching out and shaking Barnes’ hand. “Peter.”

And that was that.

Or it should have been, because Tony had made it very clear that Peter was not to spar with Barnes. He was not to go on any missions or train with Barnes. He was not to ask the man questions about the past or about his arm or about Wakanda or what the Captain was like way back when.

“In fact it’s probably best if you just pretend he’s not here altogether.”

“If he’s so dangerous, then why is he here?”

“He’s not dangerous, not anymore apparently.”

“But I still can’t--,”

“No, you can’t.”

Tony should have known better though. The kid was a fucking savant when it came to finding loopholes and technically Tony had never outlawed UNO.

So there they were, trash talking each other over a card game and fighting over the last of the pizza rolls.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Tony rolled his eyes and turned only to find a somewhat happy looking Steve Rogers standing behind him. Pepper would probably describe him as happy, anyway.

Tony would describe him as smug, but whatever.

But in all fairness, his friend was currently not tearing through the city on a blind, murderous rampage. Maybe there was a little room for happy.

Didn’t mean Tony had to admit it out loud. Instead, he gestured to the living room with his coffee and said, “Your kid better not corrupt my kid.”

Steve tilted his head and crossed his arms, his forehead creasing in consideration as he watched the two in the other room. “I’m pretty sure Peter’ll be the one corrupting Bucky.”

There was an incredulously moaned “duuuude,” that filtered in from the living area followed by a deep, delighted chuckle. Tony turned to see Peter drawing more cards while Barnes smiled. Not a smirk or a grin, but an actual beaming smile.

“Maybe that’s not a bad thing,” Tony conceded, “Kid might be good for him.”

Tony knew it was coming before Steve opened his mouth, there was no need to say it, but Steve said it anyway. “He was good for _you_.”

Pure smugness.

“Shut up.”

Tony left the kitchen to the sound of Steve’s quiet laughter and Bucky’s triumphant cries of “UNO!”

Fucking cinnamon rolls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to buy a house and I want to throw my head through a wall.


	8. Is He Kevin Bacon?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter meets the Guardians. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone had asked if I'd consider writing about Peter and the Guardians. I thought about it, came up blank, forgot about it, and then came up with an idea while waiting in line in a drive thru. 
> 
> This isn't like the previous posts, and definitely not as long. This is more like four little things caught somewhere between a drabble and a short-story.

1.

“Is he Kevin Bacon?” Gamora asked. She slowly turned from the TV and looked towards the two Peters, looking very much confused and a little disappointed.

“No, he is _not_ Kevin Bacon,” Quill snapped. He frowned and slammed the popcorn bowl down on the table before pointing angrily at the screen. “What is this shit?”

Peter tossed a gummy worm in his mouth. “ _Footloose_ ,” he answered, “the remake.”

“Bullshit.” Quill stood and looked back at the screen. “Why would they remake _Footloose_?”

Peter grinned. “Maybe because they realized the original kinda sucked?”

Quill’s frown deepened. “I hate you.”

Peter shrugged. “I’ll get over it.”

 

2.

If Peter was grateful for anything in his life it was that he’d managed to convince a sentient somewhat-talkative tree to be his friend.

Not because it was cool or anything (it totally was), but because he was almost a thousand percent certain that Mr. Stark would skin him alive if he’d let a klepto-smartass-raccoon (because, yeah, that’s a thing) steal an arc reactor.

“Let me out,” Rocket ordered.

Peter shook his head and quietly mouthed “No,” behind Rocket’s back. Groot just rolled his eyes.

Rocket was trapped in what looked like a little cage of thick twigs and vines that was sprouting out from what should have been Groot’s hand.

Peter slowly approached the cage, swallowed nervously, and cleared his throat. Rocket turned around and snarled.

“Come on, man, you can’t just take things that aren’t yours,” Peter pleaded, hand held out expectantly.

“Oh, I think I can,” Rocket countered, “It’s what I do best.”

“I am Groot,” Groot admonished…or so Peter guessed, because Rocket sighed, glared at Groot, and reached into a hidden pocket to retrieve the dull reactor.

“Traitor,” he hissed before pushing the reactor through the gap in the makeshift cage.

Peter sighed in relief. “Thanks,” he said, more to Groot than Rocket, but whatever, before turning to leave.

If he was lucky, he’d be able to put the reactor back before Mr. Stark even noticed it was gone.

 

3.

Peter was an idiot.

MJ agreed, but that was beside the point. He was pretty sure her opinion had been unchanged since freshman year, current events not-withstanding.

Leave it to Peter to lose an alien in the middle of Manhattan.

“She looks like a freaking bug, how hard could this be?” MJ asked, completely unworried. She bit into a corndog and glanced around.

“She looks less buggy with the hat,” Peter reminded her, standing on his tiptoes and trying to see above the crowd. “Oh god, what if she takes it off?”

“She’s naïve, not stupid,” MJ pointed out. She tossed the empty corndog stick into the garbage, licked a smear of mustard off her finger, and stepped up on a fire hydrant. “Found her, hat and all.” 

Which was good, because the last thing Peter wanted to do was to let Mr. Stark and Gamora know that he’d lost Mantis near Times Square.

It’d be even better if Mantis wasn’t so freaking friendly.

“Hey, Mantis!” Peter called, dodging through a group of tourists.

Mantis turned, smile widening at the sight of Peter and MJ approaching. “Hi, Peter,” she said, waving enthusiastically, like they hadn’t just spent the entire afternoon walking through the city together. “This is Sasha.”

Peter turned and looked at the woman standing behind Mantis. She was unsmiling.

“Hey,” Sasha said, grabbing Mantis by the arm and turning her back around, “It’s extra for group.”

Peter stopped and frowned. Group?

Sasha looked back at Peter, her frown suddenly matching his. “And I don’t do kids.”

Oh.

Great. Leave it to Mantis to find the one prostitute working outside an Olive Garden.

“Oh,” also leave it to her to point it out. “You are thinking about sex.”

Sasha looked startled, like she wasn’t used to people saying it out loud in the middle of the street. Which, come to think of it, she probably wasn’t. Discretion and all.

“Oh, no,” Peter shook his head and smiled as politely as he could as he broke the contact between the two women. “No, no, no. Sorry, uh, Sasha, no. Big misunderstanding.” He grabbed Mantis by the hand and pulled her away. “Mantis, let’s go.”

“I am sorry, Peter Parker,” she said. She flexed her fingers in his hand and tilted her head to the side. “You are embarrassed.”

Peter pulled his hand out of her grip and quickly stuck it in his pocket. “Yeah, don’t…just, let’s go back, yeah?”

“Is it because of the sex?”

“Mantis!”

MJ just laughed. “You’re an idiot.”

See? She agreed.

 

4.

“He is beautiful.”

Peter looked up and followed Drax’s line of site. Thor was standing across the room, talking animatedly with Quill and Gamora. “Sure.”

Drax frowned and looked down at Peter. “You do not agree?”

“No, I agree,” Peter assured him,  because yeah, he was pretty sure the majority of the planet would agree, “but we don’t generally say it. Out loud.”

Drax’s frown turned to one of confusion. “Why not?”

Peter didn’t know, maybe because…”He could hear me?”

“Do you consider it a sign of weakness?” Drax asked. He turned to Peter and crossed his arms.

“What? No.”

“Gamora admits Thor is beautiful and she is a fine warrior,” Drax pointed out, ignoring Peter’s protest.

“I don’t think it’ll show weakness.”

“Your mate agreed.”

Peter frowned in confusion, realized who Drax was talking about, and then sighed as he begged, “Please do not call MJ my mate.”

“Then what is the problem.”

“It’s just, you know….,” Peter shrugged and then gestured towards the god on the other side of the room. “He’s Thor, with the muscles, and the…height. And I’m…,” Peter trailed off as he looked down at his bare feet.

“He _is_ one of the finer samples of your race,” Drax agreed, nodding slowly as his eyes turned back to Thor.

“I don’t think he’s one of us. Technically.”

“That would explain why he’s so much better than you.”

“Wow, dude. Rude.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, I own a home now. And I did it all on my own, a single woman in her twenties with enough student loan debt to make Scrooge McDuck cry. Take that, Mom! Also, I might cry.


	9. Technicalities and Other Things that can Suck It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark is throwing a temper tantrum and disguising it as a baking frenzy.
> 
> Peter is sick of people treating him like a kid, and ignoring all the good he's done just so they can focus on the bad.
> 
> Or the one where everyone yells at each other and Tony tries to make it better with a cupcake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know it's been a while since I last wrote anything. Remember that new fancy house I just bought? Yeah, it caught fire. I've been dealing with being technically homeless for the last 5 months while arguing with insurance companies and learning first hand that being a grown up fucking sucks. Responsibility can go suck a dick. Also Life has a sense of humor since I once wrote a story about Peter's home burning down.
> 
> And for the record, I have had family and friends step in to help me out, my house is almost completely reconstructed, and hopefully within the next month I'll be back home. So it's not complete doom and gloom.
> 
> I tell you all of that so you can understand why this story is a rollercoaster of styles and feelings. I started it before the fire, tried to pick it up again after the fire, was too depressed so I ignored it, and then got excited now that my home has walls again.
> 
> Also, I figured I needed to finish this before Marvel decides to fuck me over with what ever is happening on the 26th (Endgame...).
> 
> Please my emotional ramblings in the form of a story.
> 
> Also, being a grown up with responsibilities is better than being dead, but still...I'm allowed to be dramatic.

 

"But then, in his lifetime, [he] had often ignored what was technically legal. Technicalities didn't appeal to him. All too often, they simply got in the way of doing the right thing." 

\--John Flanagan (2011), "The Lost Stories (Ranger's Apprentice Book 11)

 

 

Tony Stark was throwing a temper tantrum and disguising it as a banking frenzy.

It was confusing, somewhat alarming, and admittedly a little funny to watch.

“What am I looking at?”

“It’s called a blondie.”

“It looks like a giant cookie.”

“No, it’s a…it’s _like_ a giant cookie, but it’s not.”

Peter licked juice off his thumb and looked between the two men arguing over a piece of cake. He was sitting on the counter, legs crossed, feet tucked under his knees as he slowly ate chunks of pineapple out of a plastic container.

The kitchen was a mess, there was no other way to describe it, despite Tony’s “efforts” to clean up as he went along. The sink was overloaded with mixing bowls and whisks, globs of watered-down batter still coated the sides despite half-assed efforts to rinse them off.

There was a measuring cup tipped over on its side near the stand mixer leaking a thin line of vegetable oil onto the counter. Cracked egg shells, chocolate wrappers, and something that looked suspiciously like crumbled peanut butter cups littered the floor around the trash bin.

The countertop and surrounding cabinets had arcs of drying chocolate batter streaked in long, trailing lines; a product of turning the mixer on high and letting physics reign.

There was also a fine coating of flour and powdered sugar that seemed to coat every once reflective surface.

Tony said it was an accident, but Peter had seen the man work before. Had watched him dismantle everything from multi-billion dollar jets to a busted up coffee pot May had bought at Costco. Tony wasn’t messy. He was disorganized at times, a little erratic with his methods, but he wasn’t messy.

Which was the only reason Peter was willing to bet the fourteen dollars he had in his pocket that the hazard area that had once been the penthouse’s kitchen was completely intentional.

Pepper had asked Peter to distract him, to take Tony’s mind off the fact that he was, for lack of a better term, under house arrest, grounded, quarantined to the Tower until the threat to his life could be nullified.

Apparently, Tony didn’t have the best track record with being told “to sit it out” and he was prone to taking drastic measures. Pepper had known this already, but Peter was quickly learning.

“Just watch him. Don’t let him do anything stupid.”

“Like what?”

“At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised. Just…just call me if he looks like he’s about to build anything that looks like a death-bot.”

Peter had a pretty good feeling chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter ganache weren’t going to end the world, but he had an even better feeling that Pepper still wasn’t gonna be happy when she got home.

Because from where Peter was sitting, it wasn’t so much about trying to get the recipe right as it was about how big of a mess Tony could make.

Rhodey looked at the blondie Tony was transferring to a cooling tray and sighed. “Tony?”

Tony eased the pastry from the pan, wiped his flour smeared fingers on his already stained t-shirt, and reached for a bowl full of buttercream. “Yeah?”

“Why are you doing this?” Rhodey asked, sounding both resigned and tired.

“Ask the kid,” Tony said, head tilting in Peter’s direction as he stirred the icing. “It’s his fault.”

Peter frowned and tried to talk around the large chunk of pineapple he’d just bitten into. “Um. No, it isn’t.”

Tony stopped stirring. He looked at Peter and gestured at the mess around them. “This was your idea.”

“How was this my idea?”

“You told me to watch YouTube.”

“Yeah, but I meant look up old vines or watch videos of cats being weird,” Peter defended, “not latch on to May’s playlist and binge on baking tutorials.”

“You turned it on and left.” Tony lifted the spatula and licked at the icing, his eyebrows rose in quiet surprise at the taste before he returned to stirring. “The videos just started playing and I went with it. What did you expect?”

“Excuse me for thinking you capable of navigating the internet unsupervised,” Peter mumbled just before popping another piece of pineapple into his mouth.

Tony stopped stirring and frowned. “Is that sass? Are you sassing me right now?”

Rhodey smirked, looked down, and tiredly rubbed his forehead as he muttered, “You’re turning the kid into a little smartass.”

“Better than being a dumbass,” Peter pointed out, only to freeze in horror when he realized what he’d just said, and _who_ he’d said it to…”I mean, no, I wasn’t calling—,” he tried to apologize, but Tony quickly cut him off.

“No, do not apologize for that. That was funny.” Tony pointed the spatula at Peter threateningly. A glob of icing fell onto the counter. Tony had a gift for amplifying awkward situations.

Peter stared back and forth between the genius acting like an overgrown five-year-old and the colonel glaring at him disapprovingly. “Uh…”

Thankfully, Rhodey wasn’t one to let an awkward silence linger. He shook his head in amused disbelief and said, “You are terrible.”

Tony rolled his eyes and let the spatula drop back into the bowl of icing with a thick _plop_. “I’m adorable.”

“ _He’s_ adorable,” Rhodey countered, pointing a finger at Peter. “ _You’re_ a pain in the ass.”

Tony frowned and stole a piece of Peter’s pineapple. “He can be a pain in the ass. Ask Happy.”

“I’d rather we didn’t ask Happy,” Peter added quickly, tone somewhat timid. They ignored him.

“What do you think Pepper’s going to say when she sees this mess?”

“Hopefully, she’ll be so impressed with the food that she won’t notice the mess.”

She wasn’t impressed.

And she definitely noticed.

There was a small discussion that sounded a lot like an argument. It started with an exasperated “What the hell, Tony?” and ended with Pepper angrily stomping away, cupcake in hand and heels click click clicking down the hall.

Somehow Peter got roped into helping clean up the mess, which he personally thought was unfair. But it wasn’t like he could exactly tell Pepper Potts that, not when she was glaring daggers at Tony.

Pepper was intimidating in a way that Peter had only experienced with May.

He decided he wanted to stay on her good side, and apparently Tony did too, because when Pepper decided that both Tony and Peter were banned from the kitchen, they didn’t argue.

It was a sign of how much Tony truly cared for Pepper that he actually respected the ban (seeing how it was _his_ kitchen, but whatever.)

It had taken nearly an entire hour to clean up the mess from Tony’s baking venture, and Peter had hated every minute of it.

Not because it was hard (it wasn’t) or boring (it was), but because Tony had officially lost his distraction and was now visibly pouting.

It was unnerving and Peter didn’t know how to handle it. He had hoped things would get better once they made their way to the lab, but nope.

Tony was still pouting.

But now with purpose, or that’s what Peter told himself. Tony’s irritated frown had morphed, looking a little less annoyed and a lot more angry, determined.

Peter claimed his spot at the small work table Tony had given him and watched as Tony began to pace up and down the length of the work room, hands occasionally reaching out to grab a screw driver or bundle of wires, fingers twitching around them before he tossed them aside, dismissive. His eyes were constantly roaming, like he was looking for something.

Peter folded his arms on the table and rested his chin on top, eyes following Tony.

Eventually, Tony sat down in front of a computer and began lazily typing. Images began to appear on the screens around the workroom, articles highlighting the attack on Stark Industries, photos of the damage caused by unknown explosives, lab reports, chemical analyses, witness statements—

“Are you hacking the S.H.I.E.L.D database?” Peter asked, recognizing Nick Fury’s frown in one of the photos and knowing good and well that the media wouldn’t have been able to get a shot like that.

“Not the whole database,” Tony muttered, fingers steadily typing at a pace way too calm for someone committing what Peter was pretty sure to be a crime. “S.H.I.E.L.D keeps hiring idiots that use agency computers to play online games or update their Facebook status. They’re asking to be hacked.”

Tony zoomed in on a photo of the device that had blown a crater in the street the size of a swimming pool.  “Besides, it’s technically _my_ case, the guy was trying to kill _me_. If anyone has a right to look at it…” Tony trailed off with a shrug before he sent the pictures of the mangled device to a different screen with an order for FRIDAY to scan.

“I thought Director Fury said you weren’t allowed to work on the case?” Peter asked. He blinked as blue and white holograms of twisted metal and burnt wires materialized before him. “That it was too dangerous?”

“Aliens, psychotic gods, pissed off aunts, and confused super soldiers are dangerous,” Tony said, fingers flicking through the holographic images, sorting them into groups that Peter couldn’t understand, “A deranged bomber is tame by comparison.”

Peter begged to differ, but kept it to himself. He sighed, propped his chin on his folded arms once more, and continued to watch as Tony sorted through projected images, listened as FRIDAY was ordered to run diagnostics, to analyze shapes and textures, to compare densities.

In no time at all, the room looked like something out of every nerd’s dream. Tony worked non-stop, talking to FRIDAY as though she were an actual person only for her to talk back, completing the illusion. More images filled the air, morphing and shifting under Tony’s command.

Peter sat in stunned silence, because holy shit, this is exactly how he’d always imagined Tony Stark to be and, yeah, actually getting to watch Tony Stark _be_ Tony Stark was kinda cool. At least it was until Tony spun on his heel and began sorting through a plastic bin filled with scrap metal.

When he returned to the center of the room and held up the misshapen piece of metal next to an image of the busted bomb, brow arching in judgment as he compared the two, Peter frowned.

When Tony began pulling out used circuit boards and spools of unused wires, Peter’s enthusiasm for the science flat lined.

“Mr. Stark?”

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing?”

“Reconstruction.” Tony grabbed a pair of welding gloves and began to pull them on.

Peter looked between the images of the twisted, blackened metal in the photos and the nice smooth pieces lying on the work table. “You’re gonna rebuild the bomb?”

“Yep.”

“Uh…”

Tony spun around, frown in place as he searched for a welding helmet. “Spit it out, kid. “

“Miss Potts said I was supposed to call her if you start to do anything…dangerous,” Peter hesitantly admitted.

“Is that why you’re here?” Tony snapped. He looked angry, _sounded_ angry. “You’re my babysitter now?”

“What? No!” Peter quickly assured him. He licked his lips and gave half a shrug. “She just, she just asked me, since I was, you know, already here…I’m not a babysitter.”

Tony gave him one more hard look before softening the angry, betrayed glare into something closer to an annoyed scowl. He sighed, shoulders falling as he picked up the spool of wire, examined it.

Peter licked his lips and said very quietly. “Please don’t build a bomb.”

Tony looked up and glared. “I’m not planning on using it, I just…,” he turned and threw the wire across the room. It landed on the back work bench, sending a scattering of tools clanging to the floor. Tony stared at a screwdriver as it rolled behind a cabinet. He took a deep breath, let it out through his nose and turned to Peter, eyes hard, pleading, like he was begging Peter to understand. “Someone tried to kill me.”

“I know,” Peter said.

“People were hurt.”

“I know.”

“And you think I should just sit back and let it happen? That I should let other people fight my battles and get hurt trying to fix whatever fuck up this is?”

“Mr. Fury said—,”

“I know what Fury said,” Tony’s voice was sharp, words short and crisp. “I’m asking what you think.”

Peter felt himself shrink into his chair, more disappointed than scared. “You know what I think.”

Tony glared. “Pretend I don’t.”

Peter forced himself to take a deep, calming breath and then focused his eyes on the smear of baking flour on Tony’s shirt as he tried to put his thoughts into words. “If it were me…I’d want to be out there helping, stopping the guy before someone else got hurt.”

Peter looked up to find Tony still staring at him, eyes still hard, but his mouth was pressed in a tight line, like he was fighting a smile, a justified ‘ _I was right’_ kind of smile. He nodded, gave another somewhat defeated sounding sigh, and sat across from Peter, arms folding on the table, welding gloves still on.

Peter licked his lips and hesitantly leaned forward, mimicking Tony’s pose. “So…what are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know,” Tony admitted. He sounded tired. “Despite popular opinion, I do not actually enjoy breaking the rules, but benching me is--,”

“Stupid?” Peter suggested.

Tony smiled, a real one. “Yeah, it’s stupid. Let’s go with that. Keep it PG.”

Peter smiled back.

“Alright, loopholes. Find them.” Tony pulled off his gloves, tossed them aside and looked at Peter expectantly.

Peter frowned. “What?”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Kid, you are a fucking savant when it comes to breaking the rules--,”

“Bending the rules,” Peter corrected. Tony ignored him.

“—so let’s have it. I was told I couldn’t leave the tower, that I was to sit this out and not interfere with the investigation. How do I get around that without being a dismissive, selfish asshole with no consideration for others?”

And oh shit. Okay, that was happening.

Or it would be if Peter could make his brain work.

“Uh…,” he hummed, and he just _knew_ he looked like an idiot all slack jawed and wide-eyed. But Tony was used to it, because he sat patiently, finger steadily tapping on the tabletop, waiting for Peter’s brain to finish short-circuiting so it could reboot and actually think.

“Well…,” Peter began, one shoulder rising in a _hey, what about this_ kind of shrug, “they didn’t say anything about _me_ not going.”

Tony’s finger stopped tapping. His eyes widened for just a moment, before they crinkled in what Peter took to be amusement. “You are one sneaky son of a bitch. But the answer’s no. Try again.”

And yeah, that was not what Peter had been expecting. “What? Why?”

Tony stood and shook his head, scoffing like it should be obvious. “I’m not about to send a kid in to do my dirty work.”

Peter jumped to his feet. “I’m not a kid,” Peter pointed out. It would have worked better if he didn’t have to actually look _up_ to meet Tony’s eyes.

Tony’s voice softened, so much so that he almost sounded sad when he said, “You really are. “

“I was freaking fourteen when you asked me to go up against Captain America.” And yeah, Peter was starting to get angry. Maybe a bit more indignant than pissed off, but yeah, there were emotions. More than one of them.

Tony rounded the table slowly, tilting his head to the side, eyes squinted as he moved to stand directly in front of Peter. “And now you’re a full two years older. Wiser, smarter, better. More mature. Right?”

“Exactly.” Peter stood his ground, forced himself to maintain eye contact.

The corner of Tony’s mouth quirked to the side and Peter knew that was the answer Tony had been hoping for because his head straightened up and his hands came up to the side, the perfect embodiment of _there you have it_ if Peter had ever seen one.

“Well, so am I,” Tony said. “Call it personal growth, kid. More than one person reamed me a new one when they found out I recruited a freshman too young to shave. And, yeah, you might have proven yourself more than capable--,”

“Multiple times.”

“—But that doesn’t mean I’m about to willingly put you in the line of fire. Not again.”

Tony turned to walk away, and Peter felt his jaw drop again.  “Are you serious right now?”

“Deadly. Now, unless you have a plan B, this conversation is over.” Tony turned and waited, one eyebrow arched expectantly. “Well?”

“I got nothin’,” Peter admitted, somewhat angrily and nothing at all like a whine.

The other eyebrow perked up to join the first as Tony’s face morphed from one of annoyed expectation to one of surprise before both folded into a distrusting V as his eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Am not!”

“Are to!”

“I thought we were supposed to be more mature now?”

“Rhodey was right. You are a little smartass.” Tony pointed a finger at Peter and got way up in his personal space. “Stay away from S.H.I.E.L.D. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“No hacking. No sneaking around the bomb site. No following their agents. No nothing. Am I clear?”

“So, no doing any of the things you’ve been doing?”

“Lose the attitude and answer my question. Am I clear?”

“Crystal.”

But Tony was right. Peter was a fucking savant when it came to loopholes.

* * *

 

Peter was told to stay away from S.H.I.E.L.D, and he would. Totally.

Didn’t mean he couldn’t look elsewhere.

He’d been forbidden from hacking, tracking, or thinking about anything S.H.I.E.L.D related. But Peter didn’t need S.H.I.E.L.D. He’d been born and raised in the city and the last two and a half years had taught him how to navigate it.

Sure, Happy and the others laughed and made fun of the way Peter helped little old ladies cross the street. They made dramatic “awwww” sounds when he rescued a cat from a tree, or in Happy’s case, muttered a deadpan “that’s cute”.

And yeah, sometimes being the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man meant being rewarded with churros and pinched cheeks rather than cheers and praises. But it also meant that Peter got to know the neighborhood.

And while Iron Man was on a first name basis with the Governor, Spider-Man knew the nickname of the homeless guy that liked to camp out behind the bank on 32nd.

“Hey, Glitch. What’s up?”

Glitch was hunched over in a kneeled position as he tried to fix the wheel on his shopping cart. He jumped at the sound of his name, knees popping as he tried to stand. As soon as he saw Peter hanging upside down from a broken fire escape, his wrinkled race fell into a frown as he rolled his eyes. “What the hell you want this time, kid?” he asked, moving to bend back down and resume his work.

Peter smiled beneath his mask and gave a small shrug. “Just to talk.”

“You talk too much. Anyone ever tell ya that?” Glitch asked.

“You do,” Peter informed him. “Every time we meet.”

Glitch tossed another scowl over his shoulder and resumed his work. “And yet you can’t take the hint.”

“So, does that mean I should take these hotdogs somewhere else?” Peter asked innocently, slowly revealing the white, grease stained bag he’d been hiding behind his back.

Glitch looked up and eyed the bag suspiciously, like he was weighing the cost, trying to determine if a conversation with Spider-Man was worth it. “You get sauerkraut?”

“The extra smelly kind,” Peter confirmed, shaking the bag enticingly.

“Extra smelly just means extra tasty kid.” Glitch climbed up to his feet and gestured for Peter to climb down. “They don’t teach you that in Queens?”

“Pretty sure they don’t teach that anywhere, man.” Peter took a hotdog out of the bag before handing the rest to Glitch. He pushed the bottom of his mask up to his nose, plopped down on the ground next to Glitch’s cart, and bit off half the hotdog in one bite.

Glitch shook his head, but sat down beside him. They ate quietly for a minute, Peter finishing the rest of his hotdog in a second bite, Glitch deciding to take the time to savor his, mindful of getting sauerkraut in his beard.

When Glitch finished his first and was reaching for his second, he sighed and cast Peter a sideways look. “Alright, get to it. I know you’re a nosey little fuck, so what’re you wanting to know?”

Peter dove right in. “You hear about the bomb that went off Wednesday in Manhattan? The one near Stark Tower?”

Glitch chuckled. “Iron Man sending you to do his dirty work now?”

“Nope, just thought I’d help out. Ask around.”

Glitch licked a glob of mustard off his lip and looked at Peter like he was judging him. Gauging him. “I heard about it. But then so did everyone else.”

“You hear anything about who might have done it?”

“Nope. News people got a lot of opinions though. You ever hear of Google, Spidey? You can look this shit up yourself.”

“ _I’d be happy to bring up any news articles related to the bombing, Peter_ ,” Karen chimed in happily. Peter ignored her.

“I think you and I both know I’m looking for something more,” Peter said, reaching into the bag and grabbing another hotdog. “Specifically something that the News wouldn’t know. Or wouldn’t release.”

Glitch balled up the foil from the finished hotdog and threw it on the ground. He wiped his fingers on his coat before reaching inside for another. “I already said I don’t know who did it, kid.”

Peter felt his shoulders slump. He took a large bite while he tried to think.

“But I did hear something about a raid down near the docks,” Glitch added, “Something about explosives and shit.”

Peter nearly choked. “When?” he asked, or tried to. It was muffled by the half-chewed food in his mouth.

Glitch gave him a ‘ _you know better’_ glare worthy of Aunt May and said. “A few days before the bomb went off.”

And okay, _that_ was interesting.

An hour later, Peter was having to remind Karen, yet again, that he wasn’t technically breaking the rules.

“ _Mr. Stark forbade you from interfering in S.H.I.E.L.D’s investigation_.”

“I’m not interfering in S.H.I.E.L.D’s investigation,” Peter pointed out. “I’m following a completely un-S.H.I.E.L.D related tip from a friend.”

“ _He did not seem like a friend_.”

“It’s a love-hate relationship,” Peter explained. “He keeps the love part hidden deep down.”

“ _Like Happy?”_ Karen asked.

Peter frowned. “Yeah, like Happy. Now, can you just _please_ scan the building?”

Karen didn’t answer, but a moment later the seemingly abandoned building appeared to glow before his eyes as Karen’s sensors did their thing. “ _All clear_ ,” she said. Peter smiled.

Here’s the plan, the one Peter sort of half-way thought out as he swung through the city and tried not to puke questionable sauerkraut down on half of Manhattan: find a clue or two, bring it back with a casual “So, while I was on patrol I might have found…”

If he was lucky, S.H.I.E.L.D would use the information to save the day, Tony would proudly pat him on the back, and Nick Fury would…do whatever Nick Fury did when he was happy.

The only problem was Peter was a few days too late. The police had already combed the warehouse, removing anything that might have been relevant.

Peter sat on an empty, dust covered crate and sighed. He fell back, his legs still dangling off the side and looked up at the rafters. “Karen?”

“ _Yes, Peter?”_

“Hypothetical question here, but would you consider hacking into NYPD database as breaking Mr. Stark’s rules?”

She said yes. Peter rolled his eyes and climbed off the crate.

The warehouse was mostly empty. There were strips of abandoned police tape trailing the ground near the doors, about a dozen dilapidated crates that were probably older than Peter strewn about, and a slew of tire tracks and footprints spanning the entire floor. Nothing else.

“Back to square one,” Peter mumbled as he made his way to the door. He had just raised his arm, fingers bent back and wrist cocked to release a web, when something beeped.

“What was that?” Peter asked, just as the outline for a warning sign popped up in his field of vision.

“ _My sensors are detecting a hazardous material_ ,” Karen answered.

Peter looked around the barren room. “Where?”

It wasn’t so much a hazardous material as it was trace amounts of one, almost like a bomb had sprung a leak and left a trail. A trail that Peter followed as Karen tracked it like an animated blood hound.

Peter noticed as he followed Karen’s directions that the trail seemed to overlap with a rather narrow set of tire tracks. “It looks like a cart or something,” Peter offered. Which would make sense, because who in their right mind would want to carry a leaking combustible material around.

Then again, who in their right mind would try to build a bomb?

The tracks led to another building, one nearly a block away from the abandoned and completely useless warehouse.

“Karen?”

“ _Scanning_.”

“Thanks.”

It was empty, but not like the previous building. Because while this one didn’t have anyone inside, and there were no traces of bombs or trip wires…

“Are you sure, Karen?”

“ _I’m sure, Peter_.”

There was still a lot of other stuff.

Stuff the police most definitely missed.

“Holy shit.” Peter stared gob smacked at the scene before him. It looked like something out of every pyscho’s handbook. Chapter One: How to be creepy as hell.

There were boxes of electrical components, spools of wires, and a soldering machine much like the one in Tony’s lab. And while that was worrying, it wasn’t what had grabbed Peter’s attention.

There was a rickety plastic table pushed up against the back wall of what used to be a supervisor’s office. Above it was a collage of images that screamed stalker and set off Peter’s Spidey sense. It was pictures of the Avengers, of Miss Potts and Happy. Of Peter.

There were images of Nick Fury and others Peter had never seen before but was willing to bet his PlayStation on being S.H.I.E.L.D agents.

There were blueprints spread out on one end of the table. One he recognized as Stark Tower, the others he didn’t know.

There were computer print outs of articles, some relating to the Avengers, some to various government departments that had been set up to deal with various Alien and Avenger related disasters.

“Karen, I think we should call Mr. Stark.”

“ _Calling_ ,” Karen answered, and a moment later Peter listened as it rang and rang and rang and eventually went to voicemail.

“Hang up, Karen. Try again,” Peter ordered, pushing aside the articles to look at the book beneath. It was one of those cheap calendar books you could get at the store, the kind May used to keep track of what bills were due when.

The call went to voicemail again. “Would you like me to hang up again?” Karen asked, but Peter wasn’t listening.

He was flipping through the book and trying not to freak out.

It was a schedule. Schedules, plural.

Someone, somehow had gotten ahold of Tony’s itinerary, or what it used to be before he’d been ordered not to leave the tower. Each time and place was written out in red ink.

There were other appointments listed, some in blue ink, some in black. A few dates were highlighted, others crossed out with little notes like “too crowded”, “no line of site”, and “no exit” scribbled beside them.

Peter looked for last Wednesday’s entry, saw where Tony was scheduled to arrive back in New York, back at Stark Tower. The date was circled.

Peter looked to the end of the week and felt his stomach drop. “Karen, is today Saturday?”

“ _Yes, Peter_.”

“Oh, shit.” Saturday was circled in black ink. There wasn’t anything helpful written in, not like with Wednesday’s date that had read “S. Tower 11PM”. No, this one had a hastily written “SHB” with no time.

“What the hell is SHB?” Peter asked, feeling himself starting to panic. He tossed the book back on the table and began to hurriedly sort through the articles.

“ _SHB is a shorthand acronym used by many S.H.I.E.L.D agents to refer to the S.H.I.E.L.D base of operations in a city outside that of agency headquarters_ ,” Karen supplied helpfully.

Peter froze. “What?”

“ _SHB is short for S.H.I.E.L.D Home Base_ ,” she explained. “ _It is often used during field reports when_ \--,”

“Okay,” Peter said cutting her off. “Where is S.H.I.E.L.D’s home base in New York?”

“ _I believe that would constitute breaking Mr. Stark’s rules_.”

And they _so_ did not have time for this. Peter was about to tell her as much when his eyes landed back on the tower’s blueprints. He moved it to the side and scanned the ones below, the ones he hadn’t recognized.

In the bottom left hand corner of the second blueprint was a blurred legend, like the printer had been about to run out of ink, but Peter could still make out the blocky lettered “SHB”.

“Karen, I think the bad guy’s gonna try to blow up S.H.I.E.L.D’s offices,” he said slowly. His hands were starting to shake. “So I really need you to give me that address and then to get Mr. Stark on the phone.”

Karen waited long enough for her program to analyze exactly what Peter had said before she declared, “ _It’s in Manhattan_.”

* * *

 

Peter can travel pretty fast, a hell of a lot faster than any train or cabbie trying to deal with traffic, but even so the creepy warehouse was just far enough from S.H.I.E.L.D’s offices that Peter began to panic.

 And apparently it was showing because the second Happy answered the phone he was immediately on high alert. “ _What’s happening? Why are you freaking out_?”

“There’s a bomb!” Peter screamed between heavy breaths. He was flying high enough above the city that he didn’t have to worry about causing a panic, or at least he hoped so. The last thing he needed was the Daily Bugle finding out he had caused a bomb scare in the middle of rush hour. “The bomber’s gonna attack S.H.I.E.L.D!”

“ _What?_ ” Happy said, and Peter could hear him moving into action, , and for a second, Peter thought he could hear Ned yelling in the background. “ _Why are you calling me? Where’s Tony?_ ”

“I don’t know, he’s not answering his phone,” Peter explained. He could see the outline of the building housing S.H.I.E.L.D’s offices, it was just a few blocks away.

“ _What about your panic button?_ ” Happy asked.

Oh. Yeah. That was a thing. “Uh…”

“ _Damn it, Parker. Press the damn thing, and stay away from that building!”_

“Happy, it’s gonna happen today, and today’s almost over,” Peter explained just before ordering Karen to hang up. He activated the panic button and dropped down right in front of the building.

Now what?

It wasn’t necessarily a flash back, but Peter suddenly couldn’t get the Ferry Incident out of his head. This was a completely different situation, different scenario, but still…

What if he ran in there, pulled the fire alarm, and he was wrong? What if there wasn’t a bomb? What if he somehow just…made everything worse.

“ _Parker, what are you doing?_ ” Tony’s voice sounded in his head so loud and clear that for a moment, Peter thought he was there with him. He turned on the spot, but didn’t see anything other than passing pedestrians watching him with varying degrees of curiosity before he realized the voice was coming through the speaker in his mask.

He could have started off with “I can explain,” but decided time was an issue and it might be best to just jump right in and do the actual explaining.

“I’m at S.H.I.E.L.D’s--,” Peter began.

But Tony cut him off. “ _Yeah, I can see that, kid. But what I want to know is why you are at the one place I specifically told you not to go? There’s no loophole here, kid. I distinctly remember tell_ \--,”

“Mr. Stark just shut up and listen! Please!” Peter yelled and yeah, now people were stopping to stare. Peter fired a web and started to climb. He didn’t care if he was climbing up the side of a building, looking like a maniac. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe with everyone staring at him like that.

Tony got quiet. Peter talked.

“I think the bomber is going to attack S.H.I.E.L.D. I think there’s a bomb somewhere in the building, and I…I don’t know.”

There were a few moments silence and then Tony asked, “ _How sure are you?_ ”

“Uh…,” not very, if Peter was being honest, “Seventy percent, maybe?”

The groan Tony gave made it clear he wasn’t happy with that. “ _Look, Fury and I will handle this. You get away from that building. Am I clear?_ ”

“Mr. Stark--.”

“ _I’m on my way. You get out of there. Now_.” The call ended before Peter could point out just how stupid of an idea that was.

He stopped climbing. He was probably about twenty stories up, give or take. A quick look down proved people had lost interest and moved on, each too busy with their own lives to worry about Spider-Man having a meltdown.

“Karen, can you scan the building?”

“ _I cannot, Peter. S.H.I.E.L.D’s security prevents outside scans_.”

Peter rolled his eyes and rested his forehead against the window he was currently hanging onto. _Think, Peter, think._

But he couldn’t think. The noise in the city was picking up. The work day was ending and everyone was eager to be anywhere but where they were. He could hear people talking, phones ringing, horns honking…

And honking.

“Hey, this is a no parking zone, asshole!”

Peter looked down at the yell to see that a mover’s van, the bright orange kind you could rent by the hour, was parked right in front of the building. People were honking and trying to move around it, impatient New Yorkers flipping off the driver as they drove by.

“Karen, can you scan that van?”

And she did, because Karen was awesome and also smart enough to know the seriousness of the situation. Peter didn’t know if he was relieved that he was right when she reported something suspicious in the back, or freaked out because holy shit there might be a bomb in that van.

“ _Mr. Stark is on his way, Peter_ ,” Karen reminded him. And yes, that was true, but Peter was already here, so…

He jumped down, landing on the roof of the van just in time to scare the hell out of the driver who had been trying to casually walk away. “Hey buddy, where ya going?”

The man looked like he might have been a little older than Happy, but he was definitely in a lot better shape, because the second he saw Spider-Man standing above him he took off running. And boy was he fast.

But Peter was faster. A few flicks of his wrist and the man was webbed up tight, cheek pressed into the façade of the building, eyes wide as he frantically tried to mumble around the webbing over his mouth.

Peter jumped down and opened the back of the van. “Holy shit.”

“Is that a bomb?” someone asked. And yes, yes it was.

A big one.

“ _Peter, there appears to be a timer_ ,” Karen pointed out.

Peter looked at the numbers slowly counting down. “Where’s Mr. Stark?”

“ _He is two minutes out_.”

Well that wouldn’t work. The timer was just under the two minute mark. If they were lucky, Iron Man would arrive just in time to see the bomb explode.

Peter looked around. Men and women were starting to pour out of the building, some were ushering people away from the truck, others were staring at Peter, waiting to see what he was going to do.

But Peter didn’t really know. He couldn’t exactly drive the truck out of the way. Not in two minutes and definitely not in rush hour.

Peter felt himself begin to panic again and his mind went back to that damn ferry.

“The ferry…” Peter turned. If he looked straight down 73rd Street he could see the East River. “Karen, how unstable is this thing?”

“ _I do not understand your question_ ,” she said as Peter jumped up and hovered over the bomb.

“Is it gonna go off if I move it?”

Karen waited two seconds and said, “ _I do not think so_.”

And okay, he would have preferred a definite answer, but that was better than nothing. “Okay, new plan.”

And it was a bad one, but it was better than waiting around to blow up.

Wrapping the bomb up in webbing and slinging it on his back like a deformed and deadly imitation of St. Nick’s bag of goodies wasn’t exactly Peter’s first choice for dealing with the bomb, but he’d run out of options.

Ignoring the yells and orders of the agents behind him, Peter hefted the bomb onto his back and took off, shoulders pulling at the joints as he swung towards the East River.

It was just two blocks, two lousy city blocks. He could make it. “Karen, what’s the blast radius?”

“ _There are too many unknown variables, Peter_ ,” she informed him calmly. Her tone was soothing, like she could tell he was freaking the hell out. “ _But you still have 47 seconds_.”

Peter tried to count. His brain was alternating between _Oh shit oh shit oh shit_ to _one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three--,_  to thinking of Aunt May and how he had promised her a safe and stress free weekend with Tony.

“It’s nothing to worry about, May. I promise.”

Fifteen-one thousand, six—

Roosevelt Island was in the distance, partway between Queens and Manhattan. Peter wished he was further down river, further from the shore.

He wished someone else was there to handle this, because as much as he loved being Spider-Man, there were moments, just a few, where he wished he could just let someone else take on all the responsibility.

“ _Peter, I suggest you hurry_.”

Not helping, Karen.

Peter was almost there. He could smell the river, hear the birds squawking, taste the salt in the air. The only plan Peter had was to get the bomb in the water, get it away from the people.

Only problem with that was he couldn’t exactly walk up and just drop it in. He was going on pure instinct by now, heart pounding, Spidey-sense blaring, shoulders straining.

He kept imagining that scene from that really old movie _Die Hard_ where Bruce Willis jumped from a building as a bomb went off, swinging through the air on a repurposed fire hose.

Peter had a really bad feeling he was about to be Bruce Willis, whether he wanted to be or not.

He flicked his wrist, pulling hard on his webbing to get enough momentum to carry him across the street and within distance of the next building….and then he got an idea.

Another terribly bad idea.

Maybe he _did_ want to be Bruce Willis. He could swing from the last building, propel himself far enough over the river and _toss_ the bomb before swinging back. It could work.

If he ignored Karen’s warnings and everything he knew about physics.

It would work.

Maybe.

Didn’t matter either way. He was down to just seconds now. Either it worked and it hurt or it didn’t and it wouldn’t be his problem anymore.

Peter muttered a desperate “please work,” shot a web to the highest point, and pulled as hard as he could before letting go.

Peter was used to that weightless feeling that came with free falling. It was a rush, a little added bit of excitement that came with being Spider-Man and swinging through the city. But this time was different.

He’d reached the end of the road and swung out over the river like a pendulum. As soon as he released the web, Peter’s stomach dropped. The air rushed in his ears, his heart pounded, and he felt gravity wrapping around him, pulling him down.

He released the bomb and desperately flung out both wrists, webs flying towards the closest building as the bomb fell towards the water.

He expected to hear a splash.

What he heard was a boom and the sound his body made when it collided with something hard.

* * *

 

When Peter opened his eyes, it was to find a frowning Nick Fury and Iron Man leaning over him.

“You better not be dead.”

It was said in annoyance, with noticeably more anger than concern, or so Peter thought, but then again he’d just been thrown head first into a concrete wall.

In all honesty, Peter wasn’t even sure which man had said it.

“Come on, kid. Use your words.”

That was Tony, and there was definite concern there.

“Did I do it?” Peter asked.

“You definitely did something,” Fury answered. “But no casualties, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Okay, that was good. Cool. That had been the goal. Peter turned his head, felt the world tilt for a moment and frowned.

He was lying on the ground, back pressed up against the building. Glass was everywhere. It crunched beneath people’s feet and made a little tinkling sound when he shifted, the pieces falling off of him.

There were emergency lights shining everywhere. Fire trucks and police cars lined the street. Some people were stomping about, looking official, others were standing about, looking useless.

Peter pushed himself up into a sitting position and leaned back against the wall. “No one got hurt?” he asked again.

“No one but you,” Tony confirmed. He was still wearing his mask, his head tilted to the side, like he was studying Peter.

“I’m okay,” Peter said.

Tony wasn’t convinced. “Karen says otherwise.”

“Karen’s wrong.”

And yeah, apparently AIs could sound indignant because just as Fury asked, “Who the hell’s Karen?” Karen decided to tell Peter that she was most definitely _not_ wrong.

“ _You have a mild concussion and several lacerations and a possibly dislocated shoulder_.”

“I’m moderately fine,” Peter amended. Tony took off his helmet in time for Peter to see him roll his eyes. His hair was wet, the usual careful styling completely absent. One side was flat while the other stuck up in spiky tufts. The whole image was completely unexpected and so not what Peter was used to seeing outside of combat.

Tony, for once, didn’t seem to care. He was glowering. It was somewhat intimidating, but Peter was used to it.

Tony bent down. “Which shoulder?”

Peter pointed to the one that hurt worse, and then without any warning, Tony reached forward and grabbed it, metal covered fingers pressing where Peter really wished they wouldn’t.

“Mr. Stark, that kinda hurts,” Peter informed him.

“Not as much as this will,” Tony said. Peter realized he should have seen it as a warning, but he was still coming down from an adrenaline high. That and he’d just had his bell rung when a blast wave forced him to kiss a high-rise.

Tony pushed and pulled, the movement quick, practiced, and exact-- a good sign that the man knew what he was doing.

Didn’t mean it didn’t hurt though.

Peter screamed, pushed Tony away, and fell back with a strangled cough. He gave his shoulder an experimental shrug. And hey, look at that. It didn’t hurt as much anymore.

Tony was sprawled out beside him, legs akimbo as he rubbed at the armor over his chest. Apparently, he’d pushed a little _too_ hard.  
  
Tony sat up, propped his arms on bent knees and said, “Damn, kid. Give a little warning next time.”

“Ditto,” Peter mumbled. He reached up and scratched at a tickle in his ear. He frowned when the annoying tickle turned into an annoying wetness. It was sticky, causing his mask to cling to his skin.

He didn’t need to look to know his head was bleeding.

“Someone want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Fury snapped. And man did he looked pissed. Way more intimidating than Mr. Stark’s scowl.

It was probably the eye-patch.

“I found the bomber,” Peter explained, rising once more to a sitting position. He gestured towards the river and the debris bobbing in the water. “Then I got rid of the bomb. Sort of.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna need a little more than that,” Tony said, so Peter gave it to them. He scratched his head again, felt the wetness smear, and explained about schedule books and blue prints. He was just getting to the part about the weird photo collage on the wall when Fury spoke up.

“How’d you find all this?”

“…I asked around.”

Tony looked up to the sky and made a face. One that clearly showed his was trying to keep his temper under control. “Kid, we talked about loopholes.”

“Not a loophole,” Peter quickly pointed out. “This had nothing to do with S.H.I.E.L.D. NYPD ran the raid.”

Fury didn’t seem impressed. “And how did you know about the raid?”

“…I asked around,” Peter repeated, somewhat reluctantly. When both men’s frowns deepened, Peter reminded them that “It had nothing to do with S.H.I.E.L.D.!”

Tony shook his head and rubbed at his forehead, looking very much like Colonel Rhodes had early that morning. “You’re killing me, Webs.”

And okay, was Peter just supposed to let the bad guy blow up a city block? “What was I supposed to do?” Peter yelled.

“Sit it out, like you were fucking told!” And now they were sitting in the middle of a crime scene, literally sitting, asses to pavement, feet tucked under knees, yelling at one another like pissed off preschoolers.

“You were building a bomb!”

Tony quickly held up both hands, one urging Peter to shut the fuck up, the other begging Fury to just wait a damn minute. “No. No I was _reconstructing_ a bomb……,” but of course Fury didn’t look convinced. “I wasn’t going to use it! You’ve seen _Law and Order_ , _CSI,_ things like that! I was looking for a signature. Jesus, kid.”

It turns out, if you say just the right thing, Nick Fury’s scowl can get even scarier.

Peter watched as the man took a calming breath, placed both hands on his hips, and then looked down to Tony, who was still sitting on the ground, and asked, “Is this what I’m going to have to worry about now? A mini-version of you?”

To Peter’s horror, Tony just tilted his head back so he could meet Fury’s eye, smirked, and said, “You’re just mad because the kid found the psycho before you did.”

“Please don’t make him angrier,” Peter whispered. They ignored him. Peter was actually okay with this.

“Did you set him up to this?”

“Believe it or not, I specifically told him not to do this.”

“Technically, you said--,” Peter started to explain. But Tony wasn’t having it.

“Kid. You really want to do this right here?”

Peter saw Fury’s eye travel to him. “Never mind.”

“Get him out of here. Both of you, gone.”

“Gladly,” Tony snapped, and then without warning, he grabbed Peter beneath his arms and lifted him into the air. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“I didn’t go after the bad guy,” Peter quickly explained. “Not technically.”

“Then tell me _technically_ what you did do?”

So Peter did. Or he tried to. He reminded Tony that he did not look into anything S.H.I.E.L.D. related. That he hadn’t planned to confront the bad guy, not even once. He even reminded Tony that Parkers have shitty luck, just in case Tony had forgotten.

But most importantly, he pointed out that “I tried to call you!"

“I was in the shower!”

“I know FRIDAY can patch through emergencies.”

“She does, and she did. What the hell do you think the panic button was for?”

And yeah, Peter’d forgotten about that again.

The yelling pretty much went back and forth until they landed. Not because Peter was sick of being yelled at, but because he knew he was right.

He stalked into the penthouse, pulled off his mask, and whirled around to face Tony.

“If I hadn’t done what I did, they’d all be dead now!”

“Are you…is that blood?” Tony asked. The suit disengaged, Tony stepped out and immediately reached for Peter’s head, tilting it so he could see where the blood was coming from.

“It’s fine.” Peter scowled. Tony didn’t take him at his word. Instead, he pushed his fingers through Peter’s sweaty hair, his frown deepening when he saw the small cut above his ear. It was already healing, Peter could tell. He could also tell, thanks to Tony’s still probing fingers, that it was probably bruised to hell and back. “You’re ignoring me again,” Peter grumbled.

“I am very much not ignoring you,” Tony grumbled back. He squeezed his hand under Peter’s jaw. “Feel that? That’s me not ignoring you.”

Peter pushed Tony’s hands away and took a step back. “You know what I mean.”

“Do I?” Tony asked, and boy did Peter hate it when Tony did that. “Why don’t you explain it to me, just to be sure?”

“You’re not listening to anything I say,” Peter told him. He was trying to be calm, to keep his voice even and low. But the more he said, the angrier he got. “You keep telling me I’m a kid, that I need to stay out of everything unless it somehow benefits you, and you refuse to listen to me, to admit that I’m right when we both know that that bomb would have killed a lot of people if I hadn’t stopped it.”

“What do you want me to do, huh?” Tony asked, sounding just as angry. “Am I just supposed to send you out there every time something dangerous pops up? No backup. No experience. No idea what the hell you’re doing? Huh? Tell me, Parker. What the hell do you want me to do?” He’d slowly stepped closer with each question, each point he thought he was making until he was standing right in front of Peter.

But Peter wasn’t having it. He pushed Tony away, causing him to stumble back as he yelled, “Stop treating me like a damn kid and treat me like a freaking team mate. Is that so hard?!”

It echoed off the glass walls and tiled floors. Tony stared at him, eyes wide. Peter just stood there, panting.

“Tony?”

They both turned at the sound of the soft voice. Pepper Potts was looking at them with a worried frown. Behind her MJ, Ned, and Happy were all looking out of the elevator, each with varying degrees of confusion and nerves.

Peter felt the fight leave him in a rush. His head hurt, his shoulder hurt, his…everything hurt. He could still feel the fear he’d first registered when he realized he was looking at a very real, very big bomb. He felt awkward and embarrassed, though he couldn’t really pinpoint exactly where those feelings were coming from, but he was willing to bet it had something to do with Nick Fury.

He gave one more tired look at Tony and walked out.

He thought about going home, realized that unless he took a shower first he’d have to explain to May why he was covered in blood and dust, and detoured down the hall to the spare bedroom that had somehow become his.

Except the second Peter slammed the door shut, he decided he was too tired to move. He made it as far as the bed, knees hitting the mattress before he face planted, nose landing hard on the soft, soft pillows.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus on his breathing, on the little tricks he’d been taught to calm his nerves. He tried harder when he heard his door open and close.

“Are you trying to suffocate yourself?” MJ asked.

Peter sighed and said “No,” or he tried to, but thanks to his face being buried deep in a pillow all that came out was a very dejected sounding moan that hinted at negation.

MJ was smart. She figured it out.

Peter felt the bed dip, heard her sigh as she leaned back against the headboard, her knee coming to rest on his shoulder as she pulled her feet up onto the bed. “Is Stark gonna be mad you’re getting blood all over his fancy pillows?”

Peter thought about pointing out that they were _his_ fancy pillows, that Tony had outfitted the room for everything he’d thought Peter would need, fancy hypo-allergenic pillows included, but he didn’t really feel like getting into it. Not that it mattered anyway.

“What do you want, MJ?” Peter asked.

“To make sure you’re okay, but if you’re gonna be an ass about it, I can go let Stark do it instead.”

There was another negative sounding moan. MJ understood that too.

Peter turned his head so he could see her. “I just wish he wouldn’t…” treat him like a kid? Make him feel insignificant? Be so mean?

MJ didn’t really need Peter to clarify. She got the gist. “D’you ever think that maybe he’s doing it out of concern? Like maybe he doesn’t like the idea of you being dead?”

May had said the same thing. Ned had too. And yes, the thought might have crossed Peter’s own mind once or twice, if for no other reason than Tony had said it multiple times, but that was beside the point.

And when the hell did MJ start siding with Tony Stark?

“Since he took a noticeable interest in making sure you don’t die from your own stupidity.”

“I’m not stupid.”

“No, you’re not. But you do stupid things.”

Peter glared at her.

MJ was unimpressed. “It’s not like it’s a secret. Ask Happy.”

“Let’s not ask Happy.”

MJ smirked. She reached over and pushed aside Peter’s hair, smirk falling when she saw the cut. “Does this need looked at?”

“It’ll heal,” he promised her, then closed his eyes as she started to run her fingers through is hair, blunt nails scraping gently along his scalp.

“Did you go after the bomber?” she asked.

“No.” Peter winced as MJ formed a fist, pulling at his hair. “Not at first,” he corrected. MJ resumed gently scratching his scalp.

“At first I just went to see if I could get more info, you know? Find out if there were any leads, look for clues—,”

“Even after you were told to stay out of it.” It wasn’t a question, just an _unnecessary_ observation.

“Mr. Stark was told to stay out of it. No one told me anything.”

“Stark didn’t tell you to stay out of it?”

“……….not exactly.” He was told to stay away from S.H.I.E.L.D. Technically.

MJ sighed, gave his hair another aggravated tug and slid down until she was lying beside him. “Look at me,” she ordered.

Peter looked at her. She had one eyebrow arched in judgment.

“You’re not stupid--,” she began.

“But I do stupid things,” Peter finished for her. “Yeah, I know.”

“So…is it over?”

And that was a good question.

Technically it was. Bad guy was captured, citizens were saved, and Tony Stark was no longer sequestered away by order of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Peter, however, was the one now grounded because apparently Pepper Potts had a big mouth and May Parker was number three on her speed-dial.

There was more yelling, some crying, and an angrily determined confiscation of phones, PlayStation controllers, and laptops before Peter was ignored as May tried to cool off in her room.

“You know, there’s supposed to be a system to things,” May said later that night, out of the blue. She was standing at the stove, one hand propped on the counter as the other stirred a pot of store bought marinara.

Peter was sitting in the living room, TV muted, head leaned back against the couch as he stared at the ceiling. He let his head roll to the side, watching as May studied their half-cooked dinner. “What?” he asked.

“A system,” she repeated, and Peter frowned at the waver in her voice. “To life. People are born. People grow up, they have kids, they bury their parents. Wash, rinse, repeat.” She set the sauce covered spoon to the side and turned, arms crossing over her chest as she leveled red-rimmed eyes on Peter. “Parents aren’t supposed to bury their kids,” she said. “That’s not how the system is supposed to work.”

Peter lifted his head and turned towards his aunt. “May, I’m fi--,”

“I bought you funeral insurance. Did you know that?” She snapped, cutting him off.

Peter just stared at her. “Funeral insurance,” he whispered.

“It’s where you buy an insurance policy that will pay for a funeral when someone dies,” she clarified, voice still wavering, still somewhat snappish. “I bought it six months ago, right after--,” she trailed off, leaving Peter to think back on what could have happened six months ago to prompt her to begin planning his funeral.

He couldn’t think of anything.

 She continued to glare at Peter, arms still crossed as she breathed in heavily through her nose.

Peter couldn’t tell whether or not she was fighting back tears or trying to resist the urge to yell at him some more.

She shook her head, ran her hand through her hair, and gave a heavy, sob-tinged sigh before sitting down at the kitchen table. “I bought me some, too,” she added. Letting her eyes wander back to the living room and Peter. “In case I—in case…well, you know.”

Dinner wasn’t really awkward. May didn’t give it a chance to be. As soon as the noodles were done and the sauce mixed in, she fixed herself a bowl and disappeared into her room.

Peter ate, cleaned up the kitchen, and went to bed without brushing his teeth.

He slept, kind of. Or he thought he did. He tossed and turned, even dreamed a little. The kind of dreams that sounded like hate and anger and smelled like burning skin before he opened his eyes and saw the welded slats of the bunk above him.

Sometime just after dawn he heard May puttering around the apartment, smelled coffee brewing, heard her groan when she realized the milk had expired.

She knocked gently on his door, peaked her head inside, and gave a sheepish sort of smile, something like a truce, when she saw his eyes were open.

She walked to Peter’s desk, plugged his phone in using the frayed cord that only still worked because Peter had wrapped the entire thing in electrical tape, and made her way to the bed, nudging Peter, urging him to scoot over as she laid down beside him.

She reached forward and carded her fingers through Peter’s hair. Her nails were longer than MJ’s, her touch more loving, too. More calming.

“We good?” she asked.

“We’re good,” he answered.

“You’re still grounded though.” She let her hand drop.

“I know.”

“No leaving the apartment.”

“I know.”

“I don’t care if Godzilla himself is rampaging through Queens. You are to stay here.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Got it, May.”

“Also, you can have your phone back,” she said, nodding towards his desk and the phone she’d put on to charge. “Not as a reward or anything,” she added, pointing a finger at him accusingly, like he had done something—something _else_ —wrong, “but only because if Godzilla does show his ass, I need to be able to get in touch with you.”

Peter smiled. “You’re gonna be late,” he said, rolling onto his front and tucking his arms beneath his pillow.

May nodded, ran her hand through Peter’s hair one more time, and smiled softly, almost sadly. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Peter said.

She kissed him on the temple and left. Peter closed his eyes and slept until noon.

* * *

 

Uncle Ben had set up a system of sorts for when Peter got in trouble, a way to “work off” his punishment. May had a tendency to overdo it when it came to grounding. Or at least Peter had always thought.

Ben had seemed to agree, because he had suggested (and somehow managed to convince May) that it’d be a good idea for Peter to do a few extra chores to shave off time from his sentence.

So when May grounded him until he was thirty for accidently flooding the bathroom when he started to fill the tub and then got distracted by cartoons, Peter was able to trim it down to two weeks when he did the dishes and took out the trash every day (a week and a half after he helped dry out the bathroom).

When Peter accidently knocked Mrs. McClurksy down the stairs, fracturing her femur in his haste to get to school on time, Peter was able to whittle “forever” down to just a week when he helped carry all of Mrs. McClurksy’s groceries up and helped with her laundry.

Ben might be gone, but as far as Peter knew their system was still in place.

Of course, back then he was usually grounded for things like back talking, forgetting his homework, or breaking the TV.

He tossed a nearly empty take out container of General Tso’s chicken into the trash and wondered how long it’d take to work off ‘suicidal stupidity’, ‘terroristic acts of idiocy’, or as Nick Fury had put it, ‘being a fucking dumbass’.

Peter wanted to call it heroically getting results, but he’d been overruled.

He pulled an old Tupperware container out from the back of the fridge, opened it, and quickly closed it again. He didn’t even bother to try to identify what it had once been. He simply stuffed it into the heavily drooping trash bag and fought to regain control of his gag reflex.

He was just about to reach for the butter container to see if it was _actually_ butter inside or some fuzzy forgotten concoction May had intended to have as leftovers when there was a rhythmic knock at the door.

Familiarly rhythmic. Because Tony Stark couldn’t just _tap, tap, tap._

“What are you doing here?” Peter asked, and yeah, it might have sounded a bit rude. It wasn’t supposed to. Honest. But Peter’s surprised voice had always sounded a lot like his being a little ass voice, and he sure as hell wasn’t expecting to see Tony Stark standing outside his front door wearing grease stained jeans and holding a container of homemade chocolate cupcakes.

“Apology cupcakes,” Tony declared, pointing at the clear container before pushing said container into Peter’s chest as he made his way, uninvited, into the apartment.

“Apology cupcakes?”

Tony gently nudged his foot against the half-full bag of trash still sitting on the floor before reaching for the refrigerator door and pulling it open. “I might owe you an apology. Maybe, a small one, because you were still wrong. Wrongish? But I _probably_ could have handled that better, you know, with Fury,” he clarified before straightening up and frowning. “You’re out of milk.”

“Yeah, it’s uh, it’s in the bag,” Peter said, nodding towards the trash bag at Tony’s feet. He was still standing in the doorway, cupcakes in one hand, the other resting on the still open door. “We need…more,” he finished lamely.

Tony just shrugged and started rummaging through the cabinets, acting right at home as he filled two glasses full of water. “Eat your cupcake,” he ordered.

Peter frowned, remembered the angry glare Tony had given him the day before, and did as he was told. Sort of.

He shut the door and sat at the table, at least. There were three cupcakes, all with day-old ganache and white paper cups that had turned somewhat clear thanks to butter and oil. Peter picked up the one in the middle.

“Is Nick Fury still mad?” Peter asked.

Tony handed him a glass of water, took a sip of his own, frowned at the taste of Queens’ tap water, and said, “Honestly, I think being mad is just a perpetual state when it comes to Fury. Pretty sure his base, factory default is ‘pissed off’.”

“Are you still mad?”

Tony tapped his finger against the glass, thinking. “A little,” he answered. “But it’s not entirely focused on you, if that makes you feel better.” It did. “But for the record, I am sorry.”

“Uh, me too,” Peter said. He looked down at the cupcake, scratched his thumbnail along the ridges of the wrapper, and tried to think of something to say to fill the awkward silence.

Tony beat him to it though. “New rule. No loop holes with me. “

Peter looked up, felt the corner of his mouth quirk into a smirk. “But it’s fine for everyone else?”

“Sure,” Tony said, waving a hand dismissively, before frowning. “Maybe not Happy, ‘cause you know, you’re liable to give the big guy a stroke. And let’s add your aunt to that list, yeah? Pretty sure she deserves a freaking medal having to put up with _both_ of us. Speaking of, how much trouble are you in?”

“Grounded until I graduate. She didn’t clarify whether that was high school or college.”

The corners of Tony’s mouth turned down in a sympathetic wince. “Maybe save one of those cupcakes for her. Might soften her up enough to let you off the hook before you finish puberty. If you’ve even started it yet…”

Peter rolled his eyes and looked to the bag of trash on the floor. He wanted to tell Tony he was already working on convincing May to let his sentence end early for good behavior, that he planned on not only vacuuming after he finished with the fridge, but scrubbing the bathroom and googling how to dust with that fancy dusting spray May used that made the apartment smell like lemons.

But Peter’s brain got stuck on May and the image of her sad smile and his mouth took a detour because what he said next definitely wasn’t about toilet cleaners or dust bunnies.

“D’you know you can get funeral insurance for people?” Peter asked. He focused on the cupcake’s icing, watched as little cracks formed when he pressed his finger into a stale swirl of ganache. There were a few moments of heavy silence, and when Peter looked over, Tony was frowning, studying him much like he had the images of burnt bomb fragments the day before.

Peter licked the dried icing off his finger and began to explain, “It’s like life insurance, except--,”

“I know what funeral insurance is,” Tony cut in, still frowning, still studying.

Peter nodded, and started peeling away the little paper cup from the cupcake. “May bought some for me. Apparently.”

Tony stared at Peter, mouth pressed in a firm line, eyes wide, almost angry. “Jesus,” he hissed and leaned back in his chair. He raised his hand, wiped at his mouth, and looked away, focusing on the chipped backsplash behind the kitchen sink.

“I can’t stop doing this,” Peter blurted out. It was one of those you say it as you’re thinking it kind of things, it had to be, because if Peter had had time to think it through, he never would have said it.

But too late. The words were out.

History had a tendency to repeat itself.

Tony had a catalogue of quirks, facial expressions, mannerisms, favorite sayings…

Anyone who knew the man could close their eyes and guess how he’d react, what he’d say. Peter used to be shit at that game. He knew what he _wanted_ Tony to say, but more times than not he couldn’t guess what Tony would _actually_ say. 

But this time, Peter was pretty confident he knew what was coming. After all, they’d already had this conversation. Multiple times. More than Peter wanted to admit.

It happened anytime things got too dangerous; someone would ask Peter to quit, to forget about Spider-Man and just focus on being a kid, and Peter would have to explain why that wasn’t going to happen. Why it couldn’t happen.

Tony continued to stare at the kitchen wall, and for a small, hopeful moment, Peter thought maybe Tony hadn’t heard him. But then Tony turned back to Peter and leaned forward. He propped his elbows on the table-top and rubbed his hands tiredly over his face, stopping with the palms of his hands pushed hard against his eyes.

“I know,” he said, eyes still covered, voice heavy.

Peter felt his eyes widen in surprise. So he was still shit at guessing. Sometimes that wasn’t a bad thing.

“You’re not gonna try to convince me to stop?”

Tony moved one of his hands to the side and looked at Peter, the one exposed eyebrow arched in disbelief. “Would you actually listen this time?”

Peter looked back to his cupcake.

“That’s what I thought.”

There were a few more moments of heavy silence before Tony leaned back in the chair and said, “You know I can’t get a life insurance policy?”

He sighed, twisted his mouth to the side like he was thinking of something and didn’t like the taste.

“Between Iron-Man and the--,” Tony tapped the center of his chest, where the arc reactor used to be, “—my heart isn’t exactly in tip top shape.”

Peter must have looked concerned, because Tony waved another dismissive hand and said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got a few years left, few decades if we’re lucky, but…,” Tony trailed off and gave his eyes another tired rub. “I’m not getting any younger. None of us are. And one day….what I’m trying to say, is one day we’re not gonna be able to keep doing this. If we’re lucky, we’ll turn old and grey and all have to retire.”

Tony shrugged and made a face that was half contemplation, half sneer and added, “Cap might not, but who knows.” He sighed, reached forward and broke off a piece of Peter’s cupcake, stuffed it in his mouth and slowly chewed as he stared at Peter, eyes narrowed in quiet thought.

“You’re young,” he finally said, wiping bits of chocolate crumbs onto the floor, eyes suddenly focusing anywhere but on Peter, like eye contact was suddenly too uncomfortable. “Too young at the moment, but whatever.” He looked up and offered a small smile. “But you’ll grow up one day, earn the name Spider- _Man_ and,” he made a vague gesture, hinting at the future, at whatever vision he had of an adult Peter Parker.

Peter wanted to say something profound, to point out that that was quite possibly the nicest compliment Tony’d ever given him (in a round-about way), but he was pretty sure his voice wouldn’t be steady, so instead, he stuffed a chunk of chocolate cake in his mouth and muttered an incredibly awkward and quiet “thank you.”

Tony did a good job holding back a laugh, which Peter was more than thankful for.

“Alright, kid,” he said clapping his hands together and distracting Peter from his own self-inflicted mortification. “Wanna get out of here?”

Peter quickly swallowed the cupcake, coughed at the dryness. “Grounded, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” Tony inhaled and let it out in a heavy huff of air, cheeks puffing out, eyebrows raising as he looked around, searching for a Plan B.

Peter saw his eyes land on the trash bag.

“Want help with your chores?” Tony asked.

Peter stared at him. “You wanna clean out my fridge?”

Tony shrugged. “Hey, you helped me clean up my mess when I was grounded.”

“Yeah, because Miss Potts made me.”

Tony tilted his head to the side, mouth twisting into a knowing smirk. “You trying to tell me you wouldn’t have helped if she hadn’t yelled?”

Okay, yeah. Peter would have totally helped, but that was beside the point. “Have you ever actually cleaned out a fridge before?”

Tony looked insulted. “Parker, you literally saw me scrubbing my kitchen floor yesterday.”

“Yeah, but,” Peter turned and looked towards the trash bag and the outline of the discarded Tupperware bowl, “There’s a difference between sweeping up spilled sugar and venturing into a Parker fridge.”

Tony smiled. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said, leaning forward once more, posture challenging, “if I find anything in there that’s half as bad as what Bruce has been known to leave in my fridge in the name of science, I’ll rescind my no-Neds-in-the-lab rule.”

“Seriously?”

“Try not to sound too eager. We’re talking about the man who created the Hulk. He’s literally been known to bring questionable things to life.”

Peter wasn’t about to argue, not if it meant he could cut his intended To-Do list in half, or at least however much Tony was willing to do.

“Just think of it as an extension of my apology,” Tony said, finding nothing but butter in the yellow container.  “You help me, I help you. That’s how life works right?”

And yeah, it was. Sometimes. If you’re lucky. But Parkers and luck have never gotten along. It was a thing. But Peter had learned a long time ago that not everything had to do with luck, because life was chaotic. Sometimes people died, sometimes they got super powers. And sometimes they managed to unintentionally guilt-trip billionaires into sorting through their aunt’s questionable leftovers.

And maybe May was right, there _was_ a system to life, a way things were supposed to go and it didn’t include parents burying their kids.

But Peter had already buried three parents.

He knew May was worried, that she’d already buried the majority of her family, but so had Peter.

As much as he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to lose anyone else even more. And he meant _anyone_.

So if that meant Peter had to bend the rules, had to incur the wrath of Nick Fury and his aunt to ensure that he wouldn’t be attending any more funerals anytime soon, then he’d do it.

“Jesus! Alright, kid. Ned can come to the lab.”

So yeah, life was supposed to have a system, but the system fucking sucked.

 

 

 


End file.
